


Walk

by Safiyabat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Depression, F/M, Ghosts, M/M, Vampires, mentoring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 12:46:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5417603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Safiyabat/pseuds/Safiyabat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sam gets a call from Jody saying that Claire has taken off, all he wants to do is help keep Claire out of trouble. If she absolutely has to hunt, she should do so safely and with the right information, right?</p><p>Castiel takes a dim view of proceedings, misunderstandings abound, and soon Sam finds himself hunting alone. Maybe all isn't lost, though. Maybe the presence of a bluntly spoken teenager is what Sam and Castiel need to break through the missteps and get to a point that's good for both of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Your Signal In The Distance

**Author's Note:**

> When this story was written, we knew absolutely nothing about the Darkness. It wouldn't be the first time that something had been released into the SPN world and then quieted down, so I went with that. (i.e., I ignored the Darkness.) I guess that technically makes it AU, but if you want to assume that the Darkness is out there running around doing Darkness things that's OK too. 
> 
> Also, Dean comes off as not terribly nice, despite the removal of the Mark of Cain. My reasoning is that the Mark - the position of being the lock that held back the Darkness - had an affect on the personalities of both Lucifer and Cain; it wasn't reasonable to assume that Dean would suddenly be sunshine and rainbows once it was removed. I could have spent time focusing on Dean's recovery, but then it wouldn't be a Sastiel story. The story doesn't spend much time with Dean, so don't let that scare you off; I just wanted to warn for it. I've been pleasantly surprised by the brotherly relationship as depicted in canon s11; as I mentioned before, this was written over the summer, well before we knew anything.
> 
> Special thanks to my beta, SweetSamOfMine, and to my artist, ChasingParallax.
> 
> There is show-level violence associated with this fic.

Sam jolted awake when the phone rang.  

His phone rarely rang.  Once upon a time people had called or texted or emailed him on a regular basis just to check in, or to chat, or to make plans to get together just for the sake of fun.  Those days were long gone.  Stanford was such a distant memory that it seemed like someone else had gone there, like the Sam who lived now had just watched that life through some frankly dirty windows.

            Sam’s phone rang when Dean called to give him orders on a case.  It rang when something was wrong with Dean and other people needed to get information to him so they could take care of the problem with Dean.  Otherwise it sat, silent but on at all times, so Dean could track him if he decided that he needed to, but otherwise it was useless.  No one called just to talk.  No one called just to hear  his voice.  No one called because they were curious about Sam.

            So when the phone rang at five o’clock in the morning, tore  him out of a slumber he’d only barely achieved, he knew that there was a problem.

            “Hello?” he mumbled.

            “Sam, it’s Jody.”  Jody didn’t sound very much more awake than Sam was.  He could still hear an underlying tension underneath all of the clouds of exhaustion.  “It’s Claire.”

            Claire.  It took Sam half a second as he sat up in bed.  Claire, Jimmy Novak’s daughter.  Claire, who’d been Cas’ vessel for a hot minute.  She’d gone to stay with Jody for a while after that mess with the Grigori; Dean and Cas had convinced themselves that she’d give up hunting if she went and stayed with the good sheriff and her daughter, Alex.  “She took off?”

            “Her bed was empty when I got up for work this morning,” Jody confirmed.  “She left a note.”

            He swung his legs over the side of his bed.  “Well, you know.  She’s over eighteen.  She can decide to do these things, Jody.”  He fumbled for the switch on the lamp so he could find real clothes instead of pajamas.

            “I know that,” she hissed at him.  “If she were under eighteen I could have the entire department out looking for her.”

            _Instead of you,_ Sam’s brain finished for her.  “I get it.  Hang on.”  He grabbed his laptop off the nightstand and called up the website that would let him track the card he’d given Claire.  “Okay.  Her card was last used in the Sioux Falls bus station to get a ticket to Broken Bow, Nebraska.”  He shuddered, able to get away with such a display here in the privacy of his little room.  Broken Bow was the town with the crappy motel where he’d stolen his father’s journal and learned the truth – the truth about what his father and brother really did, the truth about what had happened to his mother, the truth about what his father felt for him.  “I can be there in a couple of hours.  Whatever she’s up to, I’ll keep her safe.”

            He called up the schedule for the bus and decided he had enough time to go for a quick run before heading out.  He was getting to an age where his joints emphatically disliked long car rides and let him know about it; if he could do something to keep them loose and limber before setting off on a day of tracking down a teenaged hunter he knew that he should do so.  He went for his run, took a shower, packed a few things into a bag and left a note for Dean.  He’d pay for that later, he knew, but even knowing that Dean would panic and that panic would lead to anger he knew that it would be better to ask forgiveness than permission.

            Then he got into his rusty green-and-white pickup truck and headed out.

            It shouldn’t have taken more than four and a half hours, if Claire had been driving.  As it was, between bus transfers and stops, it was six o’clock in the evening before Claire’s bus pulled into the station on the outskirts of Broken Bow.  He saw the teenager get off the bus and watched as she stalked over to a car and stole it.  At some point, he was going to have to give her some lessons in technique, because the girl was sloppy.  Granted, she hadn’t been stealing cars since she was all of nine or whatever, but still – that sloppy work was going to get her caught one of these days.  Probably had gotten her caught more than once – hadn’t Cas gone and picked her up from a juvenile facility? Or had that been for pickpocketing?

            Whatever.  He tried to shield her from view as much as he could without getting caught, by her or by anyone else.  Once she had stolen the car, he followed her to her destination: an abandoned farm about thirty miles outside of town.  He started to feel uneasy about the whole thing as the farm loomed closer in his sights.  Abandoned farms never spelled good news in his experience – there had been the one with Osiris, that had been fun.  Or the one where they’d met Kate and Luther, more good times.  He’d brought plenty of weapons, but he hadn’t brought anything too exotic.  What if there was a god in there?  What if there was something worse?

            He saw the blonde get out of the car and creep around the barn, the only building left with any real structural integrity.  She had the Grigori’s sword in her hand – inexpertly held, but at least she had it with her.  She might get in a lucky stroke.  He noticed something else about her grip and her stance, too: she held the sword like she expected to stab an angel.  Not like she expected to fight one, and not like she expected to come across any other type of creature.  Yeah, someone needed to have a nice long talk with her.

            Part of him wanted that person to be him, because he knew that Dean and Cas would limit their talk to “Don’t,” and then wonder why it hadn’t worked.  Maybe Sam didn’t like the idea of Claire hunting.  He didn’t like the idea of anyone hunting.  He got the idea of feeling so bereft, so adrift, that all one was capable of was destruction.  She might as well be smart about it until she got it out of her system.

            He pulled his angel blade out of the weapons case.  On a hunch – or maybe a memory – he grabbed a machete too.

            As if on cue, Claire froze.  The barn door swung open and five people walked out.  They stood in the twilight with sneers on their faces, cruel twists that proved that these vampires were nothing like the nest of “cruelty free” vampires Lenore had headed up so well.  Claire yelped and started running back for her car.

            Sam slid out of the truck, machete at the ready.  The first vampire lost his head easily.  The second got in a good shot to Sam’s gut, but Sam just used that as an opportunity to close the distance and take his head too.  He’d had so much worse than a few hits to the midsection; these barely registered.  Number three went down as Sam spun away from an attack from number four, kicking out at the latter assailant to drive him away.  Number five managed to sink his teeth in and bite down on his other arm, which did hurt more than a little, but Sam punched him in the face and took his head.

            Still bleeding, Sam grinned at the last vampire.  The creature blanched.  “You’re crazy, man,” his enemy accused.

            Sam considered.  “It’s been said,” he admitted, just before slicing through the man’s neck.

            He turned to face Claire.  The girl had pressed right up against the truck, eyes wide and hands up to her mouth.  Her breath came in deep, fast gasps and her skin had drained of all color.  “Do you need a paper bag?” he asked her.

            It was enough to annoy her out of her shock.  “You need a bandage, damn it!” she snapped.  “And – and stitches, probably!  What the hell?”

            He rolled his eyes.  “I’ll stitch it up when I get back to the motel.”  He reached into the cab and grabbed a random rag out of the weapons bag.  It wasn’t the cleanest thing in his arsenal but it would do for now; he’d never gotten an infection before, and he suspected that the demon blood in his veins would continue to give him an unwelcome little immune boost.  “First things first.”

            She rolled her eyes.  “Let me guess: Claire shouldn’t be hunting, blah blah blah?”

            He smirked.  “Would you listen?”

            “What do you think?”

            “That’s why I’m not about to say it.  No.”  He wrapped the bite with the rag and tied it off with his good hand.  “Besides, there’s time enough for that crap later.  We’ve got more important things on our plate right now.”

            “Like…”  She looked down at his makeshift bandage.  “You’re scarily good at doing that one handed.”

            He gave a sheepish little smile.  “It’s a learned skill.  Anyway.  What we need to do now is get rid of the evidence.”  She might as well know the reality of the situation, especially if she was going to hunt alone.  He wasn’t going to sugarcoat things for her.

            “Evidence?”  She blinked at him.

            “Five headless corpses ring a bell?  They don’t just dissolve into dust like in Buffy.  And believe me when I tell you, you do not want law enforcement on your tail.  Come on, help me drag them back into the barn.”

            She gave a full-body shudder, but didn’t object to gathering the heads and chucking them back into the barn.  Between the two of them they got the rest of the corpses into a pile, where Sam looked around to see what he had to work with.  “We need to burn the bodies badly enough that it’s not obvious that they were beheaded,” he explained, “without making it obvious that it was arson.  That means no accelerant that we can’t explain away as having already been in the barn.”  His eyes lit on some candles and some oil lamps.  “Yahtzee.”

            “What do you mean?”  She bit her lip.

            “The stuffing in those couches dates back to before the mid-seventies, which means that when it gets hot enough it turns back into something that just fuels the fire.  Do you see any shitty whiskey around?  Vamps love shitty booze for some reason.”  He’d never gotten that – they were vampires.  He wasn’t even sure if they could get drunk; he’d never had a chance to ask Lenore or Eli, and Gordon hadn’t been keen on exploring the minutiae of his condition.

            Claire started poking around.  “Yeah, they’ve got a big old bar over here.”

            “Awesome.  Here, help me set up the bodies over here.  Don’t have to be too precise; we can just make it look like they passed out.  Could be from smoke or booze; there won’t be enough left when I’m done for the forensics teams to tell.”

            She glanced at him out of the side of her eye.  “That’s, um.  That’s a lot of thought you’ve put into this already.”

            He huffed out a little laugh.  “Cleaning your way out of a crime scene is maybe fifty percent of being a successful hunter, Claire.  I once cleaned up a crime scene so well even my dad and brother didn’t know the people they were hunting had been there, and that’s saying something.”

            “Really?”  She lifted her eyebrows and turned away.  For a moment Sam thought he’d scared her off, and he wasn’t sure if he felt good about turning her off of hunting or bad about turning yet another person off of him, but she went back to work dragging bodies over to the couch.

            Sam started the fire once he made sure that nothing would give them away and then herded the teen out of the barn.  “This place is drier than old tinder,” he pointed out.  “Plus they’ve got drums of lamp oil.  Not the brightest idea – heh – but it works out in our favor.”  Since when did vampires even need lamp oil, anyway?  Maybe they kept it on hand for their prey?  He’d have to write that down and consider it later.  Right now he had a job to do.

            He could see the moment when the connection was made on her face.  “Right.  So.  Motel?”

            “Let’s keep an eye out first.”  He leaned against the hood of the truck.  “Not for too long; you’re probably hungry and I want to get to stitching.  Need better light than this.”  He waved his hand to indicated the firelight.

            She nodded.  “So how’d you find me?” she asked after a moment.

            “I’m good at what I do.  Sometimes,” he added.  “Look, Claire –“

            “Don’t sit there and tell me not to hunt.  I know you can’t be that much of a hypocrite.”  She glared at him.

            “Nope.  Wasn’t even going to try.  You’re going to do what you’re going to do.  Of course, if you’d stayed with Jody, you’d have learned that those were vampires you were going up against, not angels.”  He grinned when she gave a little start.  “Yeah.  I guess the new place wasn’t as forthcoming about their backgrounds as you might have thought?”

            “I knew you knew Jody from hunting,” she blurted.  I didn’t know she was a hunter.”

            “Not full-time.  She’s a cop, and a good one.  But she probably didn’t want to bring it up in case you took it into your head to go out hunting again, and she probably didn’t want to bring it up around Alex because of Alex’ background.”  He shrugged.  “People think that hiding things from people, especially kids, means that they just don’t know anything’s going on.”

            “You’d know about that?”  She snorted.

            “Right here is where I found out the first eight years of my life had been lies,” he told her.  “My dad – he liked to keep secrets, just for the sake of keeping secrets I think.  He was… he said he was doing it to keep me safe, but in reality he was trying to control me.  Thought that if I didn’t know the truth I’d fall in line or something, out of fear.”

            “Huh.”  She lapsed into silence as they watched the barn burn.  Sam occupied himself by cleaning Claire’s presence out of the stolen car.  It was easier than remembering, and more productive too.

            Once the roof fell in the pair left the scene.  Sam found them a motel and got them a room for the night before calling Jody.  “I found Claire.  She’s safe,” he assured his friend before she could become distraught.  “She thought she’d found something she hadn’t, but don’t worry.  I’m going to hang out for a little while and make sure she’s okay.”

            “I’d rather she came back here, but okay.”  The sheriff sighed.  “I guess this wasn’t the right place for her.”

            He glanced at the bathroom door, where Claire was taking a shower.  “Not everyone’s cut out for the apple-pie thing.  Being a vessel, even for a little while, can put some things out of reach.  And hey – maybe she’ll exorcise whatever it is from her system and be ready to settle down a bit in a few months.  For now, though, she’s got to do what she’s got to do for her.”

            “I know.  I get it.  I could wish it were different, but I get it.  Thanks for running her down, though, Sam.  I mean, I know she’s tough, I know she’s made it this far, but there’s stuff out there that she’s not prepared for, that she doesn’t even know about.”

            “I know.  I’m going to try.  I’ll keep you posted.”

            “Thanks, Sam.”

            Next on his list of people to call back was Dean, who had sent him no less than ten messages during his absence.  “It’s about time you called me back,” Dean snarled.  “Where the hell’d you go?”

            “Doing a favor for Jody,” he told his brother.  There was no reason to hide it.

            “How come she didn’t call me, huh?” Dean wanted to know.

            Sam closed his eyes.  They’d taken the Mark off of his brother, sure, but how much had really changed?  Okay, sure, he wasn’t a bloodthirsty, immortal quasi-demonic thing on a hair trigger anymore, but the Mark changed people.  It had changed Lucifer from God’s favorite angel into… well, Lucifer.  And to be honest, a lot of those traits had been there before Dean had taken the Mark.  This, for example – this kind of jealousy, this need for adherence to the Great Winchester Hierarchy, this had existed before Dean and Cain had ever met.

            Of course, pointing that out would accomplish nothing good.  “I guess you’d have to ask her that,” he replied, giving nothing away.  “At any rate, it didn’t turn out to be anything that needed a whole cavalry charge.  One person could handle it, it’s being handled, and it’s nothing to worry about, okay?”

            Dean snorted.  “Yeah, whatever.”

            “Anyway.  My turn for the shower is coming up and –“

            “Your turn for the shower?”  Crap.  Sam should have known better than to let that slip.  “You got another hunting partner you haven’t told me about?”

            “Kind of a newbie.  They ran into a little bit of trouble, but it’s okay now.  Nothing one person couldn’t handle.  I need a wash, okay?”

            Claire came out of the bathroom.

            “Whatever.  We’ll talk about this when you get home.”  Dean hung up.

            Sam sighed and put his phone away.  “Sounds like a fun talk,” Claire told him, one corner of her mouth quirked up.

            “Just Dean.  He wasn’t exactly thrilled about the whole solo thing.”

            She smiled and sat down on her bed.  “It must be nice to have someone who cares about you enough to worry about you hunting alone.”

            He let out a huff and for just a second he didn’t care about how bitter he sounded.  “I’m pretty sure that’s not exactly his issue.  It’s more of a trust thing.  And you have plenty of people who worry about you hunting alone.”

            She rolled her eyes.  “You don’t think that’s a ‘trust thing?’”

            “No.  I don’t.  Jody called me because she was worried about you off and hunting on your own, and she was right to be.  You went into a situation without knowing what you were getting into.  If those vamps had gotten to you, you’d have been dead.”  Ugh, had he really degraded so far since Stanford that he couldn’t use proper grammar?

            She rolled her eyes and flopped back onto the bed.  “I’d have gotten away.”

            “Even if you had made it back to your car, Claire, vampires remember a scent.  There are ways to hide it, but they’re not written down anywhere.  They’d have followed you until they found you.  And they wouldn’t have made it an easy death, either.”  The memory of those women that Gordon had savaged, strung up in that fetid den where the former hunter had left them, sprang before his eyes without warning.  He forced it back.  He could do nothing to help them now; he could have done nothing then.

            “Look, I had no way of knowing, okay?  It sounded like angel crap –“

            “Because everything sounds like angel crap to you.  It’s what you know and what your big… issue is.  And I get it.”  He took off his outer shirts in an attempt to get at the bite wound.

            “I sincerely doubt that you ‘get it,’” the teenager sneered at him.

            “I get a lot more than you’d expect.  You’re not the only one they’ve used as a vessel, Claire.”  He tried to give her a smile, but he could tell even without a mirror that it was coming out more like a grimace.  Instead, he turned into the bathroom and started cleaning out the wound.

            She got off the bed and followed him.  “Really?  Even after… how we met?”

            He gave a bitter laugh.  “Yeah.  Turns out the purity of the vessel isn’t much of a concern.  I’m sure it’s not exactly a comfortable fit for most angels, being stuck in something like me, but it’ll do in a pinch.”  He dumped peroxide onto the wound.  It stung, and he watched the injury foam up.

            “How do you get over it?”  She sat on the toilet seat, looking up at him.  “I mean, Castiel was only in me for a few hours and I still wake up remembering what that felt like.”

            “You don’t,” he admitted with a sigh.  “You get through it.  And I’m not exactly your poster child for that.”

            No, he wasn’t, was he?  He’d dressed his attempts since then up as “sacrifices,” but he knew what they were even if no one else would admit it.  He’d do anything to never have to remember the chill of Lucifer’s Grace, or the alien presence of Gadreel trying to force him under, or the roiling, slick, oily ooze that was Crowley, or Meg’s blazing anger and pain and hate.

            “You seem to be okay,”

            He threaded a needle.  “Glad to hear it.”

            She watched in horror as he started to stitch the bite mark closed.  “You’re.  Um.  Shouldn’t someone else be doing that?”

            “You done a lot of stitches?” he asked her.

            “Well no, but –“

            “We’ll find some way for you to practice.  But I usually prefer to do my own.  I’m pretty good at them; mine hardly ever scar.”  He glanced at her for a second.

            “Doesn’t it hurt?”

            “I guess.  Not as much as the initial bite.”  He got back to stitching.

            “Is this your way of trying to turn me off of hunting?”

            “Nope.”  He focused on his work.  “You’re going to do what you need to do.  I get that.  I wasn’t much different when I was eighteen.  And like I said, I get your reasons.  Eventually you’ll figure out a balance for yourself.  I’d just rather you were alive when you got to that point.  I know it doesn’t seem like it from our track records but not everyone has a revolving door into the afterlife.”

            “I didn’t even realize vampires were a thing,” she blurted.

            “For a long time we thought they were extinct.  Tomorrow we’ll go out and buy you a journal.  Yes, a journal, a paper journal, because you’re going to find yourself in a lot of situations where you’re not going to have power or a signal.”  He grimaced.  “We’ve got my father’s for that, and then I’ve got an electronic one for other stuff.  But you don’t have that resource.  Anyway, I’ll write down some of the most basic stuff for you.”

            She frowned.  “But I’m only really interested in hunting angels.”

            “I know.  But you’re going to find other things.”  He glanced at her and sighed.  There was so much he could say right now, stuff about not getting caught up in revenge cycles and not getting so focused that she lost herself, but why would she listen to him?  She was eighteen, and she was hurting, and he was just some creep.  Instead, he finished the line of stitches and grabbed his wallet.  “Here.  Call for a pizza and a salad and I’ll get you started on the basics.”

            She nodded, an appraising look in her eye.  He half expected her to disappear with the cash and his car, but she came back with pizza and salad and even beer by the time he emerged from the shower.  She’d splurged, too, gotten some of the craft beer that he liked, and he knew he hadn’t given her enough for that.  “Guess that fake ID’s holding up,” he observed, opening two beers and passing her one.

            She grinned.  “Not going to lecture me on underage drinking?”

            He snorted.  “You’re kidding, right?  It’s not like you’re going to get blitzed.  It’s a beer.  It goes well with pizza.”  He took a deep breath.  “So.  Crime scene cleanout.  Very important, very boring.”

            She glanced at him.  “And something you’re apparently very good at.”

            “Well, yeah.  It helps to have a certain personality type.  A certain attention to detail, I guess.”  He smirked, knowing exactly why he’d always gotten stuck with the job.  “You’re cleaning on two different levels.  You’re cleaning for civilian forensics teams – you don’t want them to ever think that there’s a reason to look deeper.  Like tonight – you don’t want them to even realize that there was a fight.

            “Then you’re also cleaning it out in terms of hunting.  You need to salt and burn any and all remains, because there’s always a risk of something coming back and causing trouble.  It’s not always feasible, but if it’s possible you need to do that.  You want to try to avoid leaving any trace of yourself behind – another reason for the fake IDs.  You’re already in the system from your days as a juvenile offender.”

            “Hey, those records are sealed!  I’m eighteen now!” she objected, throwing herself back against the flimsy chair as her pizza slice went limp in her hand.

            “That might cut it with backwoods departments.  It’s not going to do much in a city, or with the feds.  And depending on what kind of trouble you get into, you may find yourself having a lot more contact with the feds than you want.”  He poked at his salad but didn’t eat it; the thought of Henricksen and his Lilith-summoned ghost turned his stomach.  “They can make your life very difficult, so it’s best to stay off the radar.”

            “How do you do it?” she asked, leaning forward again.

            “Well, I do some creative computer work.  And good crime scene cleanout.  And I’ve been on the most wanted list… uh, three times?  Twice?  One of those times, though, something else really wanted me on that list.  So I guess I couldn’t have done much about that one, but still.”  He took a swig from his beer.

            “So just light everything on fire,” the teen surmised.

            “Tempting.  But no.  Then they’re looking for a serial arsonist.  You’re going to have to be creative.  And I’ve seen you work, so I know you’re capable.”

            She froze.  “Really.”

            “Sure.  You kept yourself alive and relatively safe out there for a long time.  It wasn’t healthy, but you were a kid.”  He shrugged.  “You needed real guidance if you were going to be expected to do something else.  I mean, yeah, you got caught sometimes.  Don’t think we didn’t.”

            “Seriously?”  She smirked.  “Come on.  Out with it.  Tell me some of your bad-boy exploits.  To hear them tell it you were a little goody two shoes.”

            He barked out a laugh.  “Well I mean yeah, Dean and our father thought so.  They also thought that if they locked me into a motel room for weeks at a time and told me to stay there that I’d, you know, do it.”  He shook his head.  “I was a thief.  Pickpocket, housebreaker, and car thief.  You name it.  Sometimes I did it for money, because there never was enough money.  Sometimes I did it because I was bored and pissed off.”  He shrugged.

            “But you didn’t get caught.”

            “Not in any way that my father or brother found out about.”  He closed his eyes and let himself remember.  “There was this one time, I think it was in Fall River, I made the mistake of stealing a drug dealer’s car.  With, uh, with a healthy amount of his product inside.”

            She drew back.  “How did you not die?”

            “Very fast talking.  I had to carry that stuff for him until we left.  But I did a good job, I guess, because I got a good tip out of it.”  He shrugged.  “I guess it would have been a good career to fall back on if I’d stayed in Flagstaff.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Oh.  Um, I ran off.  A lot.  Flagstaff was where I escaped to for the longest – I mean it took them the longest to track me down.”  He squirmed.  That had been a happy memory once.  Now it was just one more thing for Dean to hate him for.

            “Huh.”  Her eyes narrowed.  “You know, you guys always look so together, so united, when I see you.”

            “We are,” he assured her.  “We are.  It’s just… well, families are complicated, and the Winchesters are more complicated than most.”  He flashed back quickly to being on his knees in that abandoned restaurant, waiting for Dean to deliver the killing blow.  It hadn’t been so much that he wanted to live; he just couldn’t stand to hear Dean thinking of himself as something that needed to be flung off into the sun or whatever.

            The blow hadn’t come.  Not yet.  Sam was still waiting.

            “I guess so.”  She must have seen something on his face, because she changed the subject pretty quickly.  “So.  What else is on my class list, Professor?”

            He laughed.  “Professor.  I’m pretty much a walking, talking example of what not to do, Claire.”

            “You took out five vamps with, like, your pinky.  You’re pretty bad-ass.”

            He blushed.  “Anyway.  You were holding that sword all wrong for a fight.  The only thing you could have done was to stab something in the back.  Which – sure.  It’s a technique, if you can pull it off.  But you’re not going to be able to do it every time.  We’ll talk about how to hold your sword, I’ll show you a few ways to practice when you’re alone.”

            She gave him an appraising look.  “Do you like hunting?”

            He bit the inside of his cheek.  “I tried for a long time to get out.  I told myself that it was temporary.  I accept that it’s my life now.  I was… I was stupid for thinking that there could ever be anything else for me.”  He had been, too.  “It doesn’t have to be that way for you, but the important thing is that it’s your choice.”

            “But there’s other stuff, too, right?  I mean, you take time to go out and do the mini-golf thing, or you have girlfriends somewhere or something?” she pressed, meeting his eyes.  “I know that Dean still makes time to enjoy life and stuff.”

            He shrugged.  The last time he’d shown interest in sex Dean kicked him to the curb.  Of course, there had been a lot more at work there.  But still.  “Sure,” he lied, and changed the subject.

            They ate their dinners and they went to sleep.  They both had nightmares.  Neither talked about it.

            He woke early the next morning and went for a run.  When he got back, he found Claire on his phone, arguing.  “You’re not actually my father,” she seethed at the handset.  “You don’t get to tell me where to go or what to do!”  She paused to listen, looking vaguely like she’d bit into a lemon before handing the phone off to Sam.  “It’s Castiel.”


	2. I'm Learning To Walk Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunting is more fun when you don't mind killing the ghost involved. Claire is subtle.

Sam took the phone and held back a sigh.  “Hey, Cas.  How are you?”

            “I am annoyed, Sam.  Would you like to know why I’m annoyed?”  Castiel’s voice managed to convey squinting eyes and a pissy set to his mouth even over the cellular waves; it was a unique talent and had to have something to do with his Grace.

            Sam folded his lips together to bite back the retort.  He could, he supposed, hang the phone up and stop Castiel from telling him that way, but it would be the only way to stop him.  “Why are you annoyed, Cas?”

            The angel didn’t pick up on the sarcastic condescension in Sam’s voice, or else he didn’t care.  “Because you took Claire hunting, Sam.  You took her on some kind of a wild adventure instead of bringing her back to the angry sheriff’s house where she belongs.”

            Sam counted to five in his head.  “Okay.  Cas, first of all Claire took herself hunting.  I showed up  late in the game.  By the time I caught up to her she was already involved.  The vampires had her scent.  They wouldn’t have stopped tracking her until they had her, so they had to go.  You get that, right?”

            “You should have brought her back to the bunker immediately and waited for backup, not taken them on alone!” Cas insisted.  “She could have been hurt!”

            Sam pulled the phone away and stared at it for a moment.  “You have no idea how vampires actually work, do you?” he asked after a moment.  “The only safe way to handle the situation was to kill all of them, right away.  Yes, there’s a way to hide your scent from vampires but I don’t carry those ingredients on me as a general rule.  You can check with Dean; he’ll explain how that works.”

            “If he doesn’t back up every word, Sam –“

            “He will, Cas.  Because it’s the truth.  It’s not the first time we’ve dealt with hostile vampires.”  Sam rolled his eyes again, making Claire laugh.

            “I insist that you bring Claire back to the bunker, Sam.  She isn’t safe out there.”

            Sam shook his head.  Cas couldn’t see it, but that didn’t matter.  “I’ll discuss Claire’s options with her, but I’m not dragging her anywhere she doesn’t want to go.  She’s eighteen, she can go where she wants and do what she wants.”

            “She’s a child!” Cas said, in a louder tone than he would normally have used.  “She’s a traumatized child –“

            “Who you traumatized,” Sam interrupted.  “I mean, I get that Jimmy gave his consent and all that but you’re still not her father, you’re still the one who took her father away from her, destroyed her family, and oh yeah manipulated her into a terrifying and painful experience for which she in no way had the capacity to consent.  You don’t get to dictate anything to her.”

            “I’m all she has, Sam,” Cas seethed.

            He pinched the bridge of his nose as Claire gaped at him.  The thing was, Sam liked Castiel.  Liked him a lot more than he should, in ways that he had no business liking an angel.  He couldn’t let himself get distracted by those petty feelings, though.  They didn’t matter; it wasn’t like they would ever be reciprocated, or like he would ever act on them.  He had to think of Claire.  He had to do right by Claire, by the concept of free will.  “No.  That’s not how it works.  Claire is an independent human being, with free will of her own; she gets to make her own choices.  I’m going to defend her right to make those choices.”

            “Need I remind you –“ Cas began with a growl.

            Sam interrupted him.  “I don’t advise finishing that sentence,” he said, keeping his voice soft.  “It’s up to Claire and what Claire wants to do.  We’ll be in touch.”  He hung up the phone and turned it off, removing the battery so that Dean couldn’t use the GPS to track him.

            “That was…”  Claire shook her head.  “That kicked ass.  I don’t think anyone’s ever… I mean, thank you.”

            He forced a little smile.  “No problem, Claire.  That’s what I’m here for.  So.  I’m going to shower and then I’m going to recommend that we get ourselves out of here.  It’s not going to take Cas and Dean long to figure out where we are, GPS or no.  Maybe you could start thinking of places you’d like to go, and I’ll help you get there.  If you want,” he added, hands up.  “Not going to force you or anything.”

            She bit her lip and nodded, and Sam grabbed some clean clothes and ducked into the bathroom.

            He’d made a stand.  He wasn’t usually in the habit of doing that anymore, not with the “good guys” anyway.  He’d screwed up too often, too badly.  Part of him had wanted to yield, because he couldn’t be trusted around anyone and certainly couldn’t be trusted around someone as young as Claire.  If it had been just him, no one else on the line, he’d have probably done it.

            Claire, though – he couldn’t leave Claire hanging.  He knew too well what it was like to be dragged around like luggage, to have every choice left as a far-off dream.  Someone like Claire wouldn’t see it as keeping her safe.  She wouldn’t see the bunker as a gift, as a way to make up for the past six years.  She’d see it as a living tomb dressed up with books.

            Okay, maybe Sam was projecting a little.  He was okay with that.  If she chose the bunker he’d bring her there.

            He showered as quickly as he could, not liking to spend any more time around his own naked body than anyone else did, and got dressed.  Claire was ready to go when he stepped back into the vaguely mildewy room.  “Any ideas on where to go?  We can go to the bunker if you want.  It’s… well, it’s about the safest place on earth if that’s what you’re looking for, and it’s free.”  He grabbed her bag as well as his own and led the way to the truck.

            She followed.  “I don’t know.  Can we talk over breakfast?”

            “As long as we get at least one town away before we do.  I want this to be a choice you make for yourself, not one you make because people are shouting at you.”  He grimaced and went to return the keys.

            They drove to Gothenburg, about an hour away, and chatted in the truck.  “So,” Claire began.  “I got the impression that you’re not a big fan of going back to the bunker.”

            Sam licked his lips before carefully choosing his words.  “The bunker has its good points.  It does.  I think you’re already aware that going there would involve a lot of restriction and scrutiny.  They’re good guys, and they want what’s best for you, but they’re pretty sure that they don’t need a lot of input on what’s best for you if that makes any sense.  Now, you’re young and you haven’t had a lot of loving guidance.  Maybe that’s something you can live with or something you want.  I don’t know.”

            She made a face, like she’d bit into a pie expecting apple and gotten unsweetened quince instead.  “So what you’re saying is that it would be a lot like going back to juvie.”

            He huffed out a laugh.  “Just with a lot of décor that you can’t touch in case it’s cursed.  We’re still cataloguing a lot of things.  And something tells me that neither Dean nor Cas is going to be okay with you hunting, or even learning to hunt.”

            “Got it.”  She grimaced.  “So what are the other options?”

            “Well, you always have the option of going back to Jody’s.  She’s not mad.  Worried, but not mad.  I’m guessing you’re not enthusiastic about that, since you took off and stuff.”

            “I know Jody hunts,” Claire confirmed, tossing her long blonde curls behind her back.  “At least, I know she’s hunted.  Alex isn’t the most welcoming soul, though, and I’m not here for all the angst about hunting versus staying at home and waiting tables or whatever.”  She rolled her eyes.

            “Right.  Well.  You can hunt on your own for a while.  I can stick with you for a bit, help you learn how to not die.  Or you can find another mentor.  I can hook you up with a couple of safe folks.  There’s this guy, Garth, up in Wisconsin.  He’s a little different, he’s out of the game now but he’s got a good grasp on the basics.  There’s Tracy Bell, too.  She won’t be glad to hear from me, but I think she’d be more than willing to take another young woman under her wing and show you the ropes.”

            “Bad breakup?”  She turned to face him and gave him what probably passed for a sympathetic grimace in high school.

            “Er, no.  She’s upset about the whole Lucifer thing.  You know.”  He cleared his throat and kept his eyes on the road.  “But she wouldn’t hold that against you.  I can tell you that she’s pretty good in a fight, and your builds aren’t dissimilar.  She’d be a good one to teach you, really.  I mean, I can show you some things and help you out a bit, maybe a bit better than Dean can because I hit my growth spurt late, but your body’s still a lot different from mine.”  He shrugged.  “I’ll help where I can, though.”   He took a breath.  “I know of a group of younger hunters, about your age.  Dean’s in closer contact with them – for that matter, Dean’s got a closer relationship with Tracy – but I think they’ll get why you don’t want to go move in with Dean, why you want to hunt.  They were all manipulated into the life, same as you.  I think you’d probably be a good fit for them.”

            “Let me guess, they all blame you for that too?”  She snorted.

            “Well they’re not my biggest fans.”  He let himself grin, just a little bit.  “Dean’s the one who gets the Christmas emails, let’s put it that way.”

            “What about your friends, Sam?  I don’t want to go stay with people who are going to sit there and babble on and on about Saint Friggin Dean.  I watched him slaughter –“

            “I know,” Sam said, gripping the steering wheel tighter.  “It was – the Mark heightened some things.  He wasn’t able to control himself.  It’s gone now.  It’s – he’s better.  But I get why you can’t listen to it.”  He glanced away, out the window.  “He wasn’t always like that, you know.”

            She snorted and glanced out the window.  “I don’t know a lot about ancient murder marks.”  Sam got the impression that she wanted to elaborate on that, but he guessed that the look on his face probably stopped her.  “Anyway.  What about your friends?  Can’t I go stay with your friends or learn from them?”

            “You tried that, Claire,” he pointed out, making sure to keep his voice gentle and adding a little smile to his face.  “It didn’t work out.”

            He could see the moment that she figured it out.  “You must have other…”

            “Dead.”

            “All of them?”

            “Every last one.”

            “Oh.”  She pulled the collar of her shirt a little tighter around her neck and didn’t speak again until they got to their destination, a little diner in Gothenburg.

            “So,” she said, once the waitress had delivered their breakfasts.  “You’ve given me my options.  What do you want to do?”  She fiddled with her spoon, stirring her oatmeal rather than eating it.

            “Believe it or not I don’t really have a plan.  Or a job right now.  I’m at your disposal.  I’ll take you wherever you want to go.  I’ll probably need to check in with my brother once in a while, let him know that I haven’t broken the world yet, but that doesn’t need to be your problem.”  Sam poked at his yogurt.

            “I’m sure he wants to know that you’re safe, he’s not worried that you’re out breaking the world.”  She shook her head.  “He loves you, Sam.  Even when he was at his worst, you were able to calm him down and bring him back.”

            He forced a weak little smile, but didn’t say anything.  He could still hear that cold voice telling him that he needed to die for the benefit of the world.  It was the same voice that called out mockingly through the halls of the bunker.   _Come on, Sammy!  Don’t you want to hang out with your brother?  Spend a little quality time?_ The same voice that had told him to pick a hemisphere.  And the same one that told him in no uncertain terms – and with no mockery at all – that Dean was done trying to save him and that there was no coming back, the same one that had told him that he would want to hunt him.

            Claire couldn’t know any of that, though.  She saw only what everyone else saw, the devoted big brother ground down by Sammy’s willful ways.  “Sure,” he said, as a way of placating her.  “So.  I figure that if we head toward the northeast we can get away with hiding out for the longest time.  They’ll find us eventually, but we should be able to get you trained up enough that you can stand up to them better.”

            She grinned.  “Awesome.  Where in the Northeast?”

            He sighed.  “Dean hates New York.  Bad experience at CBGB’s when he was real young.  Um, he hates Boston too, because it’s stuffy and kind of pretentious.”

            “Split the difference and say Providence?” she suggested.

            He considered.  They’d worked a job in Providence maybe a year and a half after Jess died, maybe a few months before the first time he died.  He guessed he’d changed enough, physically, that even if they ran into that old priest no one would recognize him.  “Maybe on the outskirts, but sure.  Maybe somewhere in Connecticut would be okay too.”

            They finished their breakfast and hopped into the car.  The first leg of their trip brought them as far as Iowa City, and Sam found himself relaxing more than he had in years.  Claire was a stranger, but she was a stranger he didn’t have to pretend in front of.  She’d seen him drinking demon blood, for crying out loud.  Even though he’d been intimate with Amelia, he could never really share most of his life experiences with her and so he could never let down most of his walls.  He’d never have that kind of relationship with Claire, of course, but they had other kinds of shared experiences that made him feel almost like they were friends before they’d even gotten out of the cornfields of Nebraska.

            Ah, angels.  Maybe they were good for something after all.

            “So you and Dean literally grew up like this?  Just… driving around the country?” she asked.

            “Pretty much,” he nodded.  “We’d pick someplace, stick around for a little while, finish the job we’d showed up to do, move on.”

            “That sucks.  What about, like, girlfriends and stuff?”

            He squirmed.  “Well, Dad moved us around because he didn’t want us – especially me – getting attached.  Short-term liaisons only, you know?  I didn’t date anyone for more than a couple of weeks at a time until I got to college.”

            “So you went to college?” She snorted.  “How’d you manage that with all the moving around you did?”

            “Carefully.  I had to learn how to lie very well and how to hide a whole lot of things.”  He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.  “In hindsight, it was probably a bad idea.”

            “What?  Why?”

            “Well, if I’d stayed with my family my boyfriend wouldn’t have gotten possessed and then my girlfriend wouldn’t have been murdered.  So there’s that.”  He sighed and banged his head against the headrest.  “I mean, there’s two lives ruined just because I had to go off and chase my own happiness instead of trying to do what my family wanted.”

            Claire stayed quiet for a long moment.  “I see.”

            “And then when we went to Heaven, seeing that I remembered the night I left for Stanford well was the biggest betrayal my brother could imagine.  He took off to go say ‘yes’ to Michael a couple of days after we got back.”  He took a deep breath.

            “So let me get this straight,” Claire said, shifting so she was looking straight at him.  “You were so happy about going to Stanford that it was one of the memories that made up your Heaven?”

            He nodded.  “Sure.”

            “Why?”

            Sam opened his mouth and shut it again.  She didn’t seem to be confused, but seemed to want him to answer for himself.  “I’d worked so damn hard to get there,” he said, voice quiet.  “I’d gotten a full ride, too.  It was the culmination of a lot of hard work, but it was also… I mean, I was never the favorite, right?”  He sighed.  “I was never the good kid.  I wasn’t into hunting, and I didn’t have the talent for it that Dean did, and nothing I did was ever good enough for my dad.  If he’d seen what I did with the vampires he’d have complained that I didn’t do it faster, that I let one of them bite me, that I didn’t do it cleanly enough or quietly enough.

            “So getting into Stanford was proof that I had value, that I was good at something.  It was someone, someone in authority over something, saying that I had potential and that I was worth taking that chance on.  Not, ‘You’re a lazy shirker who’s going to get us all killed,’ but, ‘We think you have a lot of potential and we want you to fulfill that potential here, with us.’  Not, ‘We’re going to cart you along with us like luggage and tell you how much of a hassle it is and what a freak you are while we do it,’ but, ‘We think you’ll be a good fit here and we’re looking forward to having you as part of the community.’”  He squeezed the steering wheel hard enough that his knuckles went white.

            “You must miss it,” she murmured.

            “Sometimes I think about what might have been,” he admitted.  “But it couldn’t have been like that.  Not really.  There were things coming for me that were always going to be there, would have killed it eventually.  At least if I’d stayed behind a lot of people would have been spared.”

            “You’d have been miserable, though.  And you didn’t know about those other things, did you?”  She leaned forward, eyes wide.

            He swallowed.  “I didn’t.  Not until they were already in motion – not until after Jess died.”

            “Did anyone?”

            He cleared his throat.  “Yeah.  Parts, anyway.  I’m not sure who knew how much of what when.”

            “And they just didn’t tell you.”

            “They didn’t think I needed to know.”  That had been John Winchester’s biggest thing, keeping everyone on a “need to know” basis, especially Sam.  “It’s been kind of a recurring theme in my life, I guess,” he said, forcing himself to chuckle.

            “What, people hiding things about you from you?  How old are you, dude?”   She turned back in her seat so she faced out the front window again.

            “Thirty-two.”

            “Why do you tolerate it?”

            He snorted, unable to stop himself from smirking.  “Good question.  I guess because I’ve made enough mistakes that I don’t trust myself either.”

            “That’s bullshit.  If you’d known the truth, would you have made the same mistakes?  Of course not.”  She rolled her eyes and looked out her own side window.  “Honestly.  Maybe we should talk to those two.”

            “Not like they’d listen.”  He sped up.

            He found them a motel in Iowa City and they spent a little time decompressing from the ride.  Sam pulled out his laptop and sent a quick email to Dean, letting him know that they were safe and would be in touch.  Then he started scanning local news sources for any hint of a job, explaining to Claire what he was doing as he did so.  “Here we go,” he said, calling her over.  “Check out these obituaries in Muscatine.”

            She looked at them.  “It seems a little odd to have so many ‘sudden’ deaths of ‘natural causes’ from younger people in the same place,” she admitted.  “They’re all black, too.”

            He maximized another window.  “Not all hunters have great computer skills, but it’s helpful.  I broke into the Muscatine police department’s incident reports.  Every one of these alleged heart attacks took place on the same street, out in front of a house that used to be a stop on the Underground Railroad.  Apparently a slave catcher was killed when he tried to kidnap a small child and sell her into slavery down south.”  Sam grimaced.  “The historical society has a plaque outside the house.  It’s on the website.”

            “Makes the job easy,” she nodded.  “Okay.  You think that this slave catcher is attacking people now?  Why now and why not over time?”

            Sam sat back and grinned.  This part of the job he still enjoyed, at least.  “Because.  The Chamber of Commerce recently started up a walking tour trying to encourage tourism, and they’re trying to sell the town’s history as a place of liberation.  It’s possible that this charming soul just got more active because he was offended by the town celebrating this history of something that was certainly illegal and probably kind of controversial in his time.”  He looked up at his temporary hunting partner.  “Maybe he’s been doing it all this time, and no one’s picked up on it because there weren’t enough victims or because no one was paying attention to Muscatine.  Who knows?  Point is, we’re here now and we need to do the job.”

            She frowned and bit her lip.  “It’s not an angel, though.  Shouldn’t we try to avoid getting hurt so we’re in fighting form for angels?”

            He bobbed his head from side to side.  “Well, there are hunters who do specialize very minutely.  The thing is, they die a lot.  Don’t recognize something for what it is, try to stab when they should shoot rock salt, and next thing they know they’re getting dropped down a well with no backup.  So, my advice would be to at least learn something about a lot of things.  You can still focus on angels, sure.  But this way, you can save a whole lot of people from a dead racist, and keep yourself safe from future errors at the same time.”

            She stuck her tongue out at him.  “There you go being all logical.  All right.  What is it that you want me to do?”

            “Well, I found the case.  We know the name of the ghost – Mortimer Thurlow Venkman.  Do you know how to get rid of a ghost?”

            “Uh, a backpack that looks like a giant vacuum cleaner on my back?”  She twirled a lock of hair on her finger.

            “Nice try, but no.  You have to find their remains, pour pure salt – not iodized – on them, and burn them to ash.  It’s best done with two people, because ghosts don’t really enjoy that process and they’ll try to throw you into a gravestone or something.  You usually need to blast them full of rock salt or whack them with an iron crowbar or something.  But that’s where we start – digging and burning.  So.”  He logged out of anything sensitive and turned the laptop over to her.  “I promised you a journal, and you’re probably hungry.  What are your feelings on the subject of Chinese food?”

            She glowered at the screen for a moment before asking for chicken lo mein.

            “Trust me.  The research gets to be the most fun part of the hunt.  Nothing in the research phase smells bad.”  He paused.  “Well, unless you count autopsies as part of your research.  Do you?”

            “Gross!”  She clutched at her stomach.  “Just go!”

            Sam did just go.  He’d seen an ad for a stationary shop, and he figured that they’d have exactly what he was looking for when it came to Claire’s journal: something sturdy, but something to which pages could be added later if she decided to keep hunting.  They did, and he proceeded to the hole-in-the-wall Chinese place.  Once he’d obtained something for both of them to eat, he returned to the hotel.

            Claire smiled brightly at him from the desk.  “What happened?” he asked her.

            “Why do you think something happened?” she retorted.

            “Because no one’s that happy about finding a burial record.”  He set the food down.  “Out with it.”

            “Nothing happened.  I just checked my email.  That’s all.”  She rolled her eyes.  “So.  I did find the burial record.  He’s at Everwood Cemetery, which is a ‘rural cemetery.’  Which doesn’t mean what I thought it meant.”

            He chuckled.  “No, designers wanted people to go have picnics on their loved ones’ graves and stuff like that.  Kind of creepy if you ask me.  But hey, hunters burn their dead.  And anyone else’s dead that happens to cross our path.”  He shrugged.

            “That’s kind of a creepy way of looking at it.”

            He couldn’t deny that.  “So let me guess.  Historical society has a map of the place and everything?”

            “Are you kidding?  The cemetery itself has its own historical society.  With a website, and a database.  We have a map.”

            Sam couldn’t help but smile and shake his head.  “That’s great work, Claire.  You’re amazing.  Let’s eat up and maybe we can get this done and over with tonight, what do you say?”  

            “Sounds great!  Isn’t there usually more to it than that, though?”  She bit her lip.  “Like, I don’t know.  Trapping the ghost or something?”

            “That’s Scooby-Doo, Claire.”  He passed her the lo mein.  “I mean, hunts aren’t usually this simple, no.  And we’ll probably stick around an extra day to make sure it’s over with, look for another job between here and there, deal with any injuries.  How’s your aim?”

            “What?”

            He’d have almost laughed at the way her blue eyes bulged out of her head.  “Don’t worry.  It’s rock salt.  Hurts like anything, but it’s only harmful to ghosts, spirits, and demons.  The fae aren’t big fans, but it’s different.  Anyway.  We’ll take turns digging and standing guard.”

            Once it was late enough that they didn’t think anyone would notice their activities, the pair sneaked into the graveyard and followed the map to Venkman’s grave.  He had a decent stone, one with an elaborate epitaph mentioning that “cowards unwilling to face their crime” had murdered him – that spelled unfinished business to Sam.

            Between the pair of them they got the corpse dug up.  Claire took on her fair share of the digging, although she hadn’t built up the right muscle groups for this particular activity yet and Sam wound up doing more of it than she did.  He also took a few blasts from the shotgun as she tried to defend him from Venkman, who totally had a thing for choking.  Sam guessed it was better than getting tossed into a tree or a headstone, especially since he still had an iron knife on him.

            Between the two of them they managed to get the body burned and the grave filled back in.  They made their way back to the motel, where they got cleaned up and patched up (in Sam’s case) and got ready for bed.

            The next day, Sam handed Claire her journal.  “As you learn things,” he said, “it’s a good idea to write them down.  It helps you to remember them, and it makes a good reference for later.  Dean and I still refer to information from our father’s journal.  So.  What did you learn on yesterday’s hunt?”

            She glanced at the bandages covering his arms.  “Well, I learned that I’m a lousy shot.”

            He laughed.  “Okay, fair enough.  What else?”

            “I learned how to recognize where a job might be,” she said, chewing on the motel pen.  “I learned how to kill a ghost.  I learned that I have muscles in my back and shoulders I never knew existed, and that rock salt makes ghosts go away for a few moments but not for long.”

            “Good.  Write down what you learned, along with some details about the case.  We’ll go grab some breakfast and then we can start looking for another case between here and Connecticut.”  He grinned and went to go for his morning run.

            After breakfast, he sat with Claire to research possible cases on their route.  Her eyes lit on a small newspaper article about a spate of weird occurrences in Goshen, Indiana, which wasn’t that far off their route.  “I guess that there was some kind of tornado there?  Double tornado?” she said, pointing at the screen.  “Back in the time when fedoras were cool?”

            He nodded.  “Palm Sunday, 1965,” he remembered.  “Ran through a trailer park, among other places.”

            “Looks like they’ve had a few other incidents.  It doesn’t look like angels.  Could be just some angry ghosts, could be something else, but it’s weird.  People’s sinks running with blood, ceilings collapsing, grass dying in just – huge circles, nothing wrong with the soil.”   She grimaced.  “I have no idea what could be causing that.  I really only know anything about angels.”

            “You’ll get there.  You’re already showing that you’ve got a great eye for picking out patterns, seeing when something’s just not right.”  He saw how she basked in the praise and held back a sigh.  It had been a hard six years for her.  “This one – it’s not… so, I’d want to do a lot more poking around before I took whatever it is on.  Sometimes when there’s a big tragedy, or when something of great evil acts in a place, it leaves a scar on the land and attracts other entities.  That happened at the house where my family lived – where my mom was killed.”

            Her eyes lit up.  “Really?”

            “Yeah.  She was killed by Lucifer’s regent in Hell, and that was like a beacon for anything nasty that came along.”  His throat only closed a little bit at the mention of Lucifer; he was almost proud of himself.  “A poltergeist came along and set up shop in the house; nasty sucker, took a lot of work to get rid of it.”  He took a deep breath.  That had been the first time he’d met his mother – as a ghost, and she’d said all of three words to him.  “Anyway.  The whole point is, this could just be a whole lot of angry spirits.  It could be a massive poltergeist.  It could be something else.  Whatever it is, it’s not something that I’m taking a rookie hunter into.”

            She flopped back into the chair.  “Come on, Sam!  It’s not like I’m some kid!  I’ve stabbed angels!  I’ve housed an angel!  I’ve seen you –“

            “I know how you’ve seen me, Claire.  Believe me.”  He closed his eyes against the memory.  It was a useless gesture, because his mind just replayed that moment when Dean saw him sucking down demon blood against his closed eyelids.  “It’s not because you’re some kid, it’s not because you’re a girl, it’s not because you’re not competent or because you’re not a good hunter.  It’s because you’re still new at this, and because this looks like the kind of thing that’s going to require more than one seasoned, experienced hunter to take on.  As in, my dad wouldn’t have taken this kind of thing on by himself, and he was… well.  He didn’t play nice with others.”

            “Oh, and you do?” she snapped.  Sam couldn’t stop his mouth from tightening up, and she clapped her hands over her mouth.  “Oh, shit.  Sam, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like that.  You’re not -”  

            “Why not?”  He huffed out a little not-laugh.  “It’s true.  Different, but true.  Anyway.  We can go and start on the research, but I think I’m going to kick this one up to Dean and Castiel.  You did a great job of finding it – somehow it’s gone under the radar for fifty years, but you found it in a few seconds.”

            She took a deep breath.  “How about if we just kick it to Castiel?”

            Sam blinked and stepped back.  “Not like he goes anywhere without Dean, but why would we do that?”

            “I’m not so keen on having Dean on board.  It’s that whole kill-everyone-in-sight thing.  Makes me edgy.”  She snorted.  “I’m willing to have Castiel along because he seems to have this whole thing where he wants to ‘help,’ and ‘make amends,’ or whatever.  But not Dean.”

            Sam sighed.  Dean wasn’t a homicidal maniac, but he could understand her reluctance to work with him.  “You’re going to dig in your heels about this?”

            “I guess we can just find a different case and let that whole thing get worse.”  She twirled that one curl around her finger.

            He rolled his eyes.  “Fine.  Call him.  We’ll get a place at the Hampton in Goshen.  He can meet us there.”

            She responded with a distinctly feline grin that he didn’t quite trust.


	3. I'm Learning To Talk Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam opens up and comes to a decision.

It would take Cas eleven hours to get from the Bunker to Goshen, assuming that his wretched Caddy hadn’t sprung an oil leak and died by the side of the road or something.  “I wonder why Dean hasn’t sat him down and tried to explain basic car maintenance to him yet,” Sam mused as he and Claire barreled down the highway, past yet more corn.  “I mean the guy isn’t incapable of learning.”

            “You sure about that?” she asked him, raising an eyebrow.  “Everything he knows, he knew from the moment he was created.  Do we know that he’s ever learned anything new?”

            Sam snorted.  “Sure we do.  He learned to take the stick out of his ass sometime after drinking an entire liquor store not long before the world ended.”  He stretched out his neck.  “Or didn’t end.  You know.”

            “Not really.  I mean, we could tell that something stopped because there weren’t any more earthquakes where there shouldn’t have been earthquakes but you know.”  She shrugged.  “Dean said that Castiel saved the world.”

            Sam meant to stay quiet, he really did, but he gave a bitter little laugh anyway.  “Yeah.  Okay.  I was dead by that point, so I missed it.”

            She shuddered.  “You know, you think I’d get used to that whole ‘revolving door’ thing that you’ve got going on but no.”

            “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”  He sipped from his coffee.

            “If it worked like that for the rest of us, I’d still have parents.”  She looked out the window.

            “I get that.”  He sighed.  “I lost mine too.  At the same time, I don’t know anyone whose life got better when they came back.  I know the world would have been better off – no Apocalypse, for example – if I’d just stayed dead the first time.”

            She gaped at him.  “So there’s nothing in all that time since then that’s made it worth coming back?”

            His mind raced to find something.  “Look, this is kind of a morbid conversation for a car ride, don’t you think?  You can’t look at my example and think ‘That’s what’s going to become of me.’  It’s not.  You can look at me as a cautionary tale, maybe, but there were other factors at play that don’t figure into your story.  So don’t worry, okay?”  He tried for a reassuring grin.  It probably came out more like a grimace, but whatever.  

            “Okay.  So.  You didn’t seem thrilled about having Castiel come along on the trip.  Care to explain why?”  She blinked guileless blue eyes at him.

            He sighed.  “It’s complicated.”

            “We’ve got five and a half hours of corn.  We could talk about the different mile markers, I guess.” She smirked and gestured to the windshield.

            “Okay.  Cas is a nice enough guy, for an angel, but he’s, um.  He’s got his biases.”  Sam licked his lips.  “He’s not a big fan of me going out or doing much without Dean’s supervision and he thinks Dean’s always right about everything.  I’m just not sure that I’m up for that right now.”

            She hummed out a little noise of acceptance.  “Okay.  Is that all?”

            Sam inhaled deeply and tried to let it out slowly.  “It’s not enough?”  He squeezed the steering wheel and let go.  “A while ago Dean did something to me, something terrible.  And when it all blew up on us, on me, he walked away and left Cas to clean up his mess.  Dean, uh, he helped an angel to possess me against my will and then ordered that angel to erase my memory so I didn’t know.”

            Claire choked on her coffee.  “Jesus!”

            “Right.  So he left me alone, recovering from torture and the possessions, and the whole time Cas just… just wanted me to call Dean.  All the time, nagging me to call Dean.  Didn’t care about what I was going through, or that Dean was the one who took off, or any of that.  That – I mean it was nice enough of him to stay with me, I appreciate that.  But it really drove home that he’s not here for me, he’s not _my_ friend, he’s Dean’s friend.  You know?  Like, I’d thought that maybe we’d made some progress since all that crap back when.  But I guess not.  Kind of stupid of me to think anything else, really.  I mean, the day we met I knew what I was to him and I’ll never be anything else.”  He glanced away and avoided a crow feasting in the right-hand lane.  “It’s okay.  We’ll need backup.”

            She swallowed hard and looked straight ahead.  “Oh.”

            This was why Sam didn’t open up to people.  The response was always something like, “Oh.”  Well, that and he didn’t have anyone to open up to.  The hell was he thinking, anyway, blabbering at a teenaged girl like that?  So they had a few things in common.  That didn’t make them friends, or anything like that.  God, she must be so disgusted even being in the same car with him right now.  “Not a big deal.”

            “Kind of is.  That sucks. That wasn’t fair!  I mean, I wouldn’t expect him to understand what it’s like to be possessed or to have to deal with having been possessed.”  She shuddered with her whole body.  “They think it’s a frigging honor.  But he’d have known about the lying, about the memory crap, right?”  She was wrong, technically - Castiel had been briefly possessed by the Leviathan he’d devoured, but Claire didn’t know that and Sam didn’t see a reason to enlighten her.  It wasn’ the same thing, not at all.  

            “Dean did it to save my life,” Sam chuckled mirthlessly, “even though he knew I didn’t want that.  Didn’t want to be saved, didn’t want to be saved that way most of all.  And in Cas’ head, that made it all okay.  Dean wanted my body alive at that point, so whatever he did to ensure that it lived was A-OK.”

            “You’re still pretty angry.”

            “I’ll probably always be angry.”  He shook his head.  “For all the good it does me.”

            She blinked and turned to face him.  “But who are you angry with?  Dean, or Cas?”  She took a deep breath.  “Because it seems like Cas was kind of shitty about it, but he’s not the one who did it.”

            Sam ran a hand through his hair.  “I guess I’m pissed for different reasons.  I’m pissed that Cas didn’t care.  I’m pissed that he acted like I was just throwing a tantrum – like I didn’t matter, like it was only what Gadreel did that mattered.  Like if Gadreel hadn’t turned out to be a traitor it wouldn’t have been a problem that Dean handed my body, my mind and my soul away to someone else.   But,” he sighed, “it’s probably not right or rational for me to be upset about that.  He’s always going to support Dean in anything Dean does, without question and I have to accept that.”

            “You don’t, though,” she said after a second.  “You don’t need to accept it.  It’s wrong.  If you’re supposed to be friends –“

            “That’s the thing, though,” he said.  “We’re not.  We keep acting like we are, but at the end of the day he’s here for Dean, not for me, and if it weren’t for Dean we’d never see each other again.”  He blinked a few times, surprised by how much it hurt to say that out loud.

            “You talk about him like you had a crush on him,”  Claire smirked.

            “Maybe once.”  He shrugged.  “It’s long gone.  I’ve known better for a while.”  He shook his head.  “Look, the whole thing is complicated and kind of unbelievable.  Can we just… I don’t know, ignore it?”

            “Yeah, like that’s done you so much good?”

            “Not like I’ve had a lot of choice.”  He glared.

            “But it hasn’t gotten you anywhere.  You’re not happy, anyone with eyes can see that.”  She bit her lip.

            “I’m fine, Claire.”  He forced a little smile.  “I’ve accepted my life now.”

            They got to Goshen and found a motel, booking two rooms so Cas would be comfortable when he arrived.  Then, Sam found something approximately the right size and weight as Claire’s Gregori sword and found a secluded spot to show her some things she could practice on her own.

            Castiel called once he’d gotten close enough to Goshen to worry about finding their motel, and they returned to the little hostel to await the angel’s arrival.  It didn’t take long, although he frowned when they handed him the key to his own room.  “Why have you wasted money on a second room, Sam?” he frowned.  “I don’t sleep.  I’m an angel.”

            Sam rolled his eyes.  “You’re still in a body, and you take up space.  These rooms aren’t huge.”

            “Then you can have a room to yourself and leave Claire and I to ourselves.  We have a lot to discuss before I bring her back to the bunker.”

            Sam crossed his arms across her chest.  “I told you before.  It’s Claire’s choice to go back to the bunker or not.  You don’t get to make that choice for her.”

            “With all due respect, Sam, you’re not a father.  You wouldn’t understand.”

            Claire snorted.  “Neither are you.  At least he’s not faking it.  We didn’t call you here because of daddy issues, okay?  We called you here because of a job.”  She nodded to Sam.  “You want to show him what we found?”

            Sam felt the corners of his mouth twitch in appreciation.  Claire had a lot of steel in her spine.

            He launched into an explanation of what his research had found and the different possibilities for a cause.  “I’m leaning toward a really big poltergeist,” he said at the end.  “I’m not going to rule out demon, though.  What do you think?”

            “I think that we should bring Dean in on this,” Castiel replied immediately, pulling his phone out and dialing.  “Whatever this is – and it does not sound like something familiar to me, so I am inclined to agree that it is a poltergeist – it is well outside something that you could handle, Sam.  You need to let Dean take care of the larger hunts –“

            Sam felt himself shut down, a physical process that sent little twinges across his jaw.  He shouldn’t have let this happen.  He shouldn’t have let Claire call Castiel.  He should have just steered them away and messaged Dean about the hunt and been done with it.  “I’m heading out,” he said.  “Claire, I’ll pick you up wherever.”

            Cas reached out and grabbed his arm.  “Where are you going?”

            Sam knocked the hand away.  “You’d rather work with Dean on this.  That’s fine, I get it.  But I’m not going to sit around and get stuck in the motel room or told to wait in the car like when I was ten.”  He pushed past the angel, grabbed his duffel and the laptop, and went out to his car.

            “Well that’s just awesome,” he overheard Claire say to Castiel.  “There goes all the research, jackass.  Would it kill you to treat him like a person?”

            Any response was lost as he closed the door and started up the engine.

            Sam drove until he hit Nappanee, far enough away that he could breathe again but close enough that he could get to Claire if she needed him.   _Not that she would_ , he reminded himself.   _She’s a tough kid.  The last thing she needs is something like you holding her back_.  He found a motel and settled into it, adding angel warding to the usual salt lines and devil’s traps as part of his personal routine ever since Gadreel.  At least, it had been part of his routine when he could get away with it, when he could avoid Dean catching him or when he knew he didn’t need to allow Cas in.

            Then, he sat down on the bed and took a deep breath.  What the hell had that been about anyway?  It wasn’t like Cas’ feelings were unknown to him.  He’d known what Cas thought of him ever since the day they met, and while he’d occasionally deluded himself into thinking that things might improve between them he’d always known, deep down, that he was just an adjunct in the angel’s view.  And that was generous.

            Maybe he was just freaking out because he’d bared so much of himself to Claire.  That probably had a lot to do with it now that he thought of it.  He’d been exceptionally open and honest with the teen, talking about things with her that he’d never let himself speak aloud before.  He’d never been able to speak about this kind of thing with Amelia.  Ruby had known about his little crush, but she’d been very quick to point out that “Dean’s angel” wouldn’t see much of a difference between him and her when push came to shove, and as in so many other things, she’d been right.  Sam was tolerable only if he were under supervision.

            Hell, even a full demon like Meg was better than Sam.

            He needed to get himself back under control.  This was what came of letting himself think about might-have-beens, think about himself as a full hunter or a full member of the team or full anything of value.

            A small, rebellious part of him flared up, prompting him to stand up and start pacing.  A moment’s examination identified this part of him as anger, an anger that he thought had been burned away in the Cage or maybe before that.  Why should he be the one to be on perpetual double secret probation?  Why should he be the one to be eternally exiled to the kids’ table?  Sure he’d broken the last seal, but he’d also stopped the Apocalypse, had jumped into the Cage and taken two angry archangels with him.  Hadn’t Dean broken the first seal?  And sure he’d done it under torture – Sam didn’t blame him for that, not at all.  But he’d made a deal with a demon; he had to know that no good could come of that.  He’d dealt with a demon again by working with Crowley to find Brady, and then again by working with Crowley to track down Dick, and then again to unmake his own mess and free Sam from Gadreel, and then again by taking on the Mark of Cain.  He’d taken on the Mark of Cain – why was it that Sam was the one blamed and never Dean’s motives or judgment that were questioned?

            And Castiel – he’d been part of duping Sam into breaking the last seal, hadn’t he?  Oh, but he’d just been following orders!  And he certainly hadn’t been sorry to see Sam jump into that pit.  He’d screwed up on pulling Sam out, he couldn’t have not known he’d done so, but he’d been perfectly willing to let both halves of Sam reap the consequences for Cas’ failure.  Then, when Sam had the wall in place, he’d torn it down in a deliberate act of terrorism, and not even against Sam. Like always, it was for Dean.  And he’d unleashed the Leviathan against the world through his own hubris.

            No one held that against him.  Sure, some angels reminded him from time to time, but it wasn’t like they decided that Cas couldn’t make his own choices.  Hell, they even kept trying to have him lead!

            So why was it that Sam was consistently the lowest and the least?  It wasn’t so much that he wanted to be in charge, to rule over anything but himself.  He just wanted to be treated as an equal.

            The crush?  Well, maybe his feelings for Castiel hadn’t dissipated as much as he’d have liked, as much as they certainly should have.  Cas had attacked him for no reason other than to hurt Dean; Sam hadn’t mattered to him at all.  That should have killed any desire in him for the angel, whether for the angel’s love or goodwill or acceptance.  He supposed that these things couldn’t be controlled, not entirely, but he could control how he responded.

            What hadn’t been controlled was his response tonight, and he definitely blamed himself for talking so freely to Claire like that.  He should know better.  It wasn’t like she cared. It had only undone years of carefully paving over his own feelings and resentments and hurts.  He needed to get himself under control before he could be expected to function.

            First things first, though.  He picked up his phone and set it so that calls from Castiel and Dean went straight to voicemail.  He’d take off the injunction in the morning, maybe, but he wanted to know if Claire needed help.

            Then, he sat back down and focused.  He needed to be calm.  He could be calm.  He needed to be accepting.  He could be accepting.

            Maybe Claire had been right, though.  Bowing his head and meekly accepting the status quo had gotten his brain turned against him in a hostile act, gotten his childhood friend murdered, gotten him left behind when Purgatory swallowed up everything he loved, gotten him blamed upon his and Dean’s return when he followed their agreement, gotten him replaced by a vampire, gotten him hijacked ( _replaced again,_ his traitorous brain replied) by an evil angel, and almost murdered twice by his own brother.

            Maybe he _was_ the lowest and the least.  But no one else was exactly coming up smelling like roses, and submission certainly hadn’t gotten him redemption or reconciliation.

            He couldn’t sleep, of course, but then again Sam and sleep had never been on the best of terms.  He went for a run at the earliest point that he thought he could get away with it, then he went out for coffee and settled in to figure out next steps.

            First he texted Claire.   _What’s going on?  You need a pickup?_

            _Nah,_ she texted back.   _Dean’s on his way.  We’re going to try to track down what’s wrong here in Goshen.  Seeing as how I’m the only one who’s seen the research and all.  These losers know NOTHING._  A moment passed and then his phone chimed again.   _You could always bring the research by.  Come join in the hunt._

            _No._  He hesitated over the phone and then decided to elaborate.  She deserved more than a two-letter text.   _Pretty sure they won’t need it anyway.  I hadn’t gotten very far.  You going to stay with them or do you want me to come get you after that?_

            She didn’t respond for a while, and for a moment Sam felt that little spike of abandonment.  Of course she was going to stay with them.  They weren’t outcasts and could function in society.  Finally, his phone chimed.   _Can I decide later?_

            _Of course._  She wasn’t rejecting him outright.  It was a start.

            Since he had nothing to do now that Claire had as good as given the hunt to Dean and Cas, who had no use for him anyway, he decided to try to make a plan for the future.

            In theory, he should just go back to the bunker.  That’s where he had been before going to help Claire.  After the same time, he didn’t think he could do that anymore.  He hadn’t felt welcome there in a long time, if he ever had, and even his “own” room hadn’t felt like _his_ since he’d found out about Gadreel.  Sure, Dean had killed Death rather than him, (or maybe he’d just slipped or something) but he hadn’t changed in any real way.  He had Cas, and probably Claire now.  He didn’t need Sam and the reminder of everything Sam was, and now with the Mark of Cain gone, Sam didn’t have anything to offer him.  They were both angry with each other.

            Assuming that Claire wanted him around, there was a case in New Philadelphia, Ohio that might be right up their alley.  He’d see if she picked up on it before he brought it up to her, but it had the added advantage of being near Tuscarora Park.  That would probably be vaguely fun for her; he remembered having enjoyed it the one time he’d run off there when he’d been, what, seventeen, that one summer?

            If Claire chose to stay with Dean and Castiel, his options were wider.  There was a spate of what looked like animal attacks near the West Branch State Park up near Ravenna that looked like one of the nastier demons, probably not someone working with Crowley if he was reading the signs right.  It could have been witchcraft too – that spell Rowena had used on the sex worker Sam had met could have caused injuries similar to the ones he was seeing.  That wasn’t anything he was interested in getting Claire involved with.  He could also take on what looked like it might be a vampire nest up in the Cleveland area, which had the advantage of being in a larger city.

            Maybe if he just let himself get out there, enjoy the physical again, he’d be able to banish the ache that talking about his buried feelings for Cas had stirred up in him again.

            Then again, people were actually dying in Ravenna.  The vampires, if that was what was going on in Cleveland, were attacking people, bleeding them and letting them go.  Ravenna seemed like a higher priority.  He could hit Cleveland afterward.  In the meantime, he replenished his funds thanks to Donald Trump’s campaign chest, snorting quietly at the thought that Dean had forgotten that he knew how to do this sort of thing, and took care of some of the maintenance on his truck.

            Eventually he emerged to go shop for some supplies and food.  He went through another workout and then did some research for both cases into the late hours of the night.

            The next morning he went for a run, as usual.  It felt good to fall into a routine, and now that he had a plan of action he felt less adrift.  He missed his brother, sure, but things were different now.  It was best to just accept what it was and move on.  Not that he cared if Dean cut his head off or whatever, but waiting for the blow to fall wasn’t much fun.  Maybe they could schedule a date and time or something.

            He texted Claire to check in.  She told him she was okay, still wanted some time to do the job, and sent him a picture of a disgruntled-looking Cas trying to make sense of the function of a lawn flamingo outside of a mobile home in one of the poltergeist-affected areas.  In spite of himself, he laughed.

            For his part, he hacked his way into the Ravenna police department system.  Incident reports on the attacks showed no regularity to the assaults.  Not all of them had been fatal; there had been one survivor, who had escaped the attack by jumping into the reservoir.  The young man would be scarred for life; his wounds looked like small claw marks, not the huge gashes of a werewolf or a wendigo.  That made witchcraft more likely.

            He picked up the phone.  “Giant,” Rowena greeted.  “This is a pleasant surprise.”

            “Rowena.  How are you?”  He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth before running a trace on the GPS in her phone. He’d learned, while dealing with the Book of the Damned, that it payed to be polite to Rowena on the phone.  Otherwise she’d refuse to cooperate and the call would devolve into a snark-fest that got no one anywhere but angry, and he didn’t have time for that right now.

            “Now that I have that book I’m not even bitter about being chained up in that nasty wee factory of yours.  And you?  Now that you’ve got that ugly mark off your charming brother is life turning out to be everything you wanted?”  Sam could hear the sneer in her voice.  He wanted to wipe it off.

            “We’re fine,” he lied.  “Where are you?”

            “Why would I tell you that, lad?  You don’t get to be a four hundred year old witch by doing stupid things like divulging your location to excessively clever hunters.”

            He sighed, unable to argue that point.  “Alright.  Let me put it to you another way.  Are you anywhere near Ravenna, Ohio?”

            The witch laughed out loud.  “No.  Ohio is too rust belt for me.  I’ve had enough of decaying spaces ever since you chained me up inside one.”

            He couldn’t help but let the corners of his mouth twitch up at that.  “I guess I can sympathize with that.”  He glanced at the screen on his computer.  It confirmed her words: her phone thought that it was in Santa Cruz, at least.  “Listen.  That spell you cast on the sex workers, back when we first met you.”

            “Mmm.  Oh yes.  Delightful little gem.  Comes in very handy when you’re in a tight spot.  I suppose you’re looking to learn it?”

            He blinked.  What was with evil, attractive women wanting to mentor him?  First Meg, then Ruby, now Rowena.  “Uh, thanks, but that’s a level of dark magic I’m not comfortable with.  If you maybe feel comfortable sharing the counter-spell, that would be great, though.”

            “Counterspell?  My dear Behemoth, that beauty is far too fast acting to have a counterspell.  Once it’s out there, the victim’s over and done with.  Unless, of course, they happen to be an angel you’ve set on your useless, traitorous son.”  She sniffed.

            “He is useless,” Sam muttered.  “I’ll give you that much.  Say, how many other witches know that one, anyway?”

            “Can’t be more than five or six these days,” she admitted after a moment’s consideration.  “I’ll admit that I’ve been out of the loop, what with being driven underground and all that, but there might still be a few out there who have an idea.”

            Sam thought about it for a moment. James back in Saint Louis was an option, but he was pretty new at his craft and had fled the city anyway.  Don and Maria Stark, though, they’d been playing this game for a long time.  Patrick, the witch with the cards, might have an idea but it wasn’t his style of magic and Sam had no idea how to get in touch with him anyway.  Well, not without a lot of spellwork and driving.

            He went through his contact list and found Don’s number.  “Sam Winchester!” Don greeted, tone jovial.  “It is good to hear your voice!  After the Leviathans disappeared we figured that was the end.”

            Sam chuckled softly.  He’d only died – what, twice since then?  It got hard to keep track these days.  “It’s good to hear from you, too.  How’s Mrs. Stark?”

            “She’s well, she’s just organized another charity auction.  It’s going to be a blast!”

            Sam winced, hoping that it wasn’t meant literally.  “I hope it does go well.  I had a question about a spell.”  He described the spell’s effects to the ancient witch.

            Don sucked his teeth in thought.  “I haven’t seen that since Rowena MacLeod was still kicking around,” he said.  “Nasty work.  No counterspell, of course.  What’s this about?”

            Sam described what was happening in Ravenna.  “I think I’m going to have to go in there and track down the witch, but I’d rather not become a ravening swamp monster myself.  Is there a way to protect myself from that spell long enough to get in close?”

            Don hummed.  “Let me poke around a little bit and I’ll get back to you, okay, Sam?”

            Sam smiled, a real smile of relief and gratitude.  “Thanks, Don.”

            When he hung up he got up from his chair and stretched a little.  He still had to figure out a way to track down the witch themselves, but he didn’t need to do that right away.  Not if he was going to wait for Claire.  Another quick workout would be okay, maybe a little yoga would help him regain his equilibrium.

            When he’d finished that, someone came knocking at his door.

            He sprang to his feet, gun at the ready.  Most practitioners didn’t have a gun loaded with consecrated iron bullets within arm’s reach during their practice, but then again he didn’t know of many other practitioners who had a long line of creatures looking for his hide to claim as a pelt.  Then again, the subject hadn’t come up when he’d been studying formally.  “Who is it?”  He flattened himself against the wall behind the door.

            “Sam, it’s me,” came Dean’s tense, impatient voice.  “Open up.”

            Sam sighed.  Dean.  Of course.  He opened up the door and stepped back, gun still at the ready while Dean showed himself to be neither possessed nor a shifter.  “Sam, what the hell,” Dean demanded, flopping down into one of the chairs by the table.  “I mean really, what the hell?”

            “You’re going to have to be more specific,” Sam told him, putting the safety back onto the gun.  He hesitated and then holstered the weapon.

            “You just walked out, man.  Just took off like – like _whatever_.”  Dean shook his head.  “I mean first you go AWOL from the bunker, then you’re not answering your phone, and then Cas shows up and you just go stomping out in a huff like you’re fifteen again?  What’s going on here?”

            Once upon a time, Sam would have given a kidney to get Dean to talk to him, but those days were long gone, had been since before he’d gone to Stanford.  “I told you, Dean.  I was doing something for Jody.”

            “You don’t just go off on your own, Sam!” he insisted, running a hand through his hair.  “I mean –“

            Sam rounded on his brother.  “I’m thirty-two, Dean.  You either treat me like I’m an adult or I’m out, I’ve been telling you this for years.  It’s been obvious I’m not an equal in your eyes, so I’m going to go off and do my own thing for a while.”  He forced himself to exhale slowly and kept his hands loose and limber by his side.

            Dean’s eyes narrowed as he rose from his chair.  “Last time you ‘did your own thing’ you got Charlie killed.  I don’t think you really get to ‘do your own thing’ anymore, Sammy.”

            Sam cleared his throat.  “Charlie made her own decisions, Dean,” he said.  “Don’t think that I don’t hate myself about her death, because I do.  But she chose to leave the factory when she knew she was being hunted.  It’s not like she hasn’t been on the lam before.”  Dean opened his mouth to object, already red-faced, but Sam stopped him by holding up one hand.  “And Kevin didn’t even get that honor, did he?  Or are you going to blame me for that one too?”

            Dean doubled over, like he’d been punched.  “Is that what this is all about?  Really?”

            Sam sighed.  “Like I said.  It’s about being an equal.  I’ve made mistakes.  Sure.  I own up to them.  You’ve made mistakes.  Cas’ made mistakes.  You never, even when you were at your angriest with him, stopped treating him like he was on your level.  Neither of you ever saw me that way.  I was either a useful tool or an obstacle - or a burden.  And hey – your feelings are yours, and they’re valid for you and I’m not going to sit here and beg you to view me differently.  But I’m also not going to sit here and let you put me down.  I’ve been waiting all this time for some kind of redemption or acceptance from you and it’s only gotten worse.  Maybe this is what we need to get better.”

            Dean’s face went stony and impassive.  “Don’t you go bringing Cas into it.  He’s been your biggest ally.  After that whole thing with Amelia –“

            Sam laughed, bitter and dark.  “What, when you faked a distress call from the woman I loved?”

            Dean waved a hand.  “Right.  That.”  No guilt, nothing.  Sam might as well not have bothered.  “When you stomped off like a jealous child about it.  Then.  It was only because Cas forced me to work with you that we ever saw each other again.”

            “Yeah, you made that pretty clear, Dean.”  Sam opened the door.  “I’ll see you around, Dean.”

            Dean’s eyes bulged.  “You’re kicking me out?”

            “What, you thought I’d want you to stay after that?”

            “I’m not leavin’ you on your own, Sam.  You do dumb stuff when you’re on your own.”  Dean grabbed his arm.

            Sam deflected and gently shoved his brother out the door.  “Give me a call when you’re ready to talk like we’re both adults, Dean,” Sam sighed, and closed and locked the door behind him.


	4. Getting Good At Starting Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam goes for a walk in the woods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for het sex.

Don got back to Sam the next morning asking him for an email address.  He had ideas about how to guard himself from Rowena’s little supernatural rabies spell, but they were too detailed to go into by phone.  When Sam saw the instructions he understood why.  Fortunately, he had grabbed the necessary components out of the bunker storeroom before leaving.

            He’d have to figure out what to do about that now that he was staking his claim for independence, yet again.

            He sent Claire a text checking in.  He’d be available to her if she needed him, but people were dying and if he could, conceivably, put a stop to it then he had an obligation to do so.  She texted him back letting him know that she was going to see this particular hunt through with “the guys,” which strongly suggested that she hadn’t composed the message by herself, but whatever.  She was safe enough with them.

            He got into his truck – miraculously left unscathed by his brother’s temper – and headed back east toward Ravenna.  The drive took about four and a half hours, four and a half hours of time in which to regret the fact that he had no one with whom he could share the time.  When had he last done any solo hunting – with his soul, that was?  Well, he’d done some when he’d been newly freed from Gadreel, back in New Mexico; he guessed it hadn’t been that long after all.  He’d hated it then, felt like someone was watching him the entire time while at the same time abhorring the endless silence.  

            Right now wasn’t substantially different.  It took about half an hour of driving before the quiet pressed in on him like a physical thing, a car roof crushed in a rollover.  Even when he and Dean had been fighting and hadn’t been speaking to one another there had been noise, Dean’s off-key singing or his “I’m pissed at you” music (or his punishment tapes, like “Ace of Spades” on repeat when he knew Sam had a migraine).  Right now, there was nothing.

            Sam would need to get an aftermarket jack to stream music to the ancient truck’s radio.  He vowed to make the purchase a priority.

            Just as terrible as the silence was the doubt.  Sam knew, intellectually, that he was a reasonably capable hunter.  That didn’t mean that he hadn’t heard everything Cas had said, about how he needed to leave the big hunts to Dean because he just wasn’t capable.  Cas had known him longer than anyone alive at this point, except for Dean.  If even the angel thought he was an incompetent ass, maybe his own faith in his abilities was misplaced.

After all, he hadn’t managed to save his brother from Hell, he hadn’t seen through Ruby’s manipulations, he hadn’t seen through the angels’ manipulations either and he’d let himself get railroaded right into freeing Lucifer.  He’d let Castiel resurrect him without a soul, he’d let himself run around without a soul instead of putting a bullet right into his head as soon as he realized that something was wrong.  He’d somehow managed to not defend himself against Castiel when Cas tore down his Hell wall and sent him catapulting into flashbacks and hallucinations, neurological discs spinning until he was nothing but a ( _bigger)_ burden on Dean.  He’d failed to understand that Dean hadn’t meant their agreement to let each other stay dead next time to be taken literally, and he hadn’t managed to find out that Dean wasn’t dead in the first place.  He hadn’t been strong enough to complete the Trials.  He hadn’t been smart enough to overcome Gadreel’s brain cleansing, to save Kevin.  He had let Dean get turned into a demon, hadn’t found a way to save him from the Mark until it was too late.

So what exactly did he think he was going to do against a witch?  A witch was something that no one hunter should take on by themselves; even Dad would have brought in someone else as backup.  Of course, backup wasn’t an option for Sam.  The only person willing to work with Sam was Dean, and that was only if Sam stayed strictly in the background and turned his brain right off.  Hunters were more likely to hunt a _thing_ like Sam than the witch.

Of course, no hunter was willing to work with him.  That didn’t mean that no one _at all_ was willing to come out and lend a hand.  Don Stark had been willing enough to lend his knowledge.  Rowena had sounded friendly enough.  Meg had been friendly and helpful and even supportive, by the end, and even in the beginning.  The middle part had been the part that kind of sucked, the part where she wore him like a cheap suit.

Of course, Don giving him some research wasn’t exactly “backup.”  He didn’t want to work with the woman who had raised Crowley, however friendly she might be.  And Meg – well, she was dead and gone.  Someone else he couldn’t save, another of his failures.

So he found himself a motel room, distinctly not the first motel in the phone book, and he checked himself in as C. Cornell and not as Jim Rockford, and he sat down to start his research.  He plotted the attack sites on a map of West Branch State Park using ranger incident reports he hacked from the parks system and came up with a good idea of where the witch was holed up.

The next day he went for his usual run, and then he performed both of the rituals that Don Stark had sent him via email.  He probably only technically needed one; Stark had said he only really needed one, but Sam had no one watching his back and no one would know or care if the witch killed him and turned him into one of the ravening beasts in the woods so he wanted as much of a defense as possible.

Then, Sam went into the park.

It wasn’t exactly an easy hunt.  He saw two bespelled campers.  Neither of them so much as sniffed in his direction, so he guessed that Don Stark had steered him right and maybe he should send the guy a fruit basket or something.  Did old Romanian witches like fruit baskets?  He supposed manners never really went out of style, and neither did gratitude.  He’d have to survive this first.

The witch looked like a slender young man with long black hair and piercing blue eyes; Sam knew all too well how easily those kinds of looks could deceive.  The man snarled when he saw Sam.  “How did you get through my defenders?”

“You think you’re the only one who knows a little something?”  He kept his voice even, but his palms sweated and his heart kept a samba like beat in his chest.

“Hunter,” the man spat.

“I guess,” Sam agreed with a shrug.  He threw the knife he had been hiding in his hand.

The witch hurled that same spell, the one that was supposed to turn him into a snarling animal, at him.  It had no effect, and Sam’s aim was true and sure.  The knife sank into the witch’s neck, right up to the hilt.  His blue eyes bulged and his mouth moved soundlessly.  The wound was mortal, but he didn’t die immediately.  He had time to get off another spell.  Since he couldn’t turn Sam into a rabid beast, he brought a tree branch down.

Sam managed to jump most of the way out of the limb’s path, but it landed on his left leg with an agonizing thud.  Sam grunted, falling to the ground.  He’d had worse, sure, but that didn’t mean busting his leg didn’t hurt.  He wasn’t looking forward to hiking out of here on the broken bone, either.

First things first, though.  He rolled the branch off of himself and hauled himself to his feet.  Right now would be one of those times when having Cas around would be damn useful.  Dean would tell him to heal Sam, and Sam would walk out of here without a problem.  Of course, that was the last thing Sam wanted – if Cas was going to put his hands on Sam he wanted it to be because Cas wanted to put his hands on Sam, wanted to heal Sam or comfort Sam or just touch him, not because Dean ordered him to –

He wasn’t going to think about that.  Dean was the only hunter in the world with his own angel on standby.  Now that Sam wasn’t running with Dean anymore, he needed to be able to deal with normal injuries like a normal person.  That meant scars and surgery and long recuperation times like everyone else.  And absolutely, positively no thinking about Cas’ hands.

He found a sturdy stick to lean on while he set about salting and burning the witch’s remains.  While that was happening, he splinted himself well enough to drag his body through the woods again.  He went through the witch’s things, too, and helped himself to the man’s spell books and some components because it wasn’t like he had access to the bunker anymore.  Waste not, want not after all.  He might not ever use the spells, but he’d never found it anything but useful to know some background when dealing with witchcraft.

When the fire had burned down, he used the same sturdy stick as a crutch and limped his way down the path back to the truck.  The way out took a lot longer than the way in; he had to bite his lip a lot of the time and sit and take rests.  It could have been worse, he reminded himself.  The witch could have gotten the better of him.  He’d had worse.  He’d fought a demon with a busted shoulder, more than one really; he could hike himself out of the woods with a busted leg.

Eventually he made it back to the truck; by that point he was shaking so hard that he could barely unlock the door or get the key into the ignition, but he got there.  This wasn’t something he could deal with himself in the motel room.  He needed the hospital.  This was another way in which he’d been lucky – the break had happened to his left leg and not his right, and the truck was an automatic.  He could drive himself there.

The ER was busy, but when they noticed that he’d splinted himself up in the woods they were more enthusiastic about getting him into treatment sooner rather than later.  Several x-rays and a painful bone-setting later, the doctor was congratulating him on his field medical technique and asking where he’d served.  He’d saved himself a lot of rehab time and surgery on the strength of his obvious training and experience.

Sam didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or cry.  Instead he lied and thanked the doctor.  Then he drove back to the motel.

He’d be in the cast for six to eight weeks which put a crimp in his plans for getting any kind of action up in Cleveland.  Then again, maybe not.  Either way, there was absolutely a case up there and he needed to get out of Ravenna before someone figured out that he’d been here, so he took his medication and went to bed.  The next morning he’d start more research.

Claire texted him, much to his surprise.   _You okay?_

 _Sure, why?_ he asked.

_Haven’t heard from you in a little while.  Got worried.  Dean and Castiel are worried about you._

He was sure that they were worried.  Not in any way that was useful, but whatever.   _I finished a case today.  I’m a little banged up_.   _How’s your case going?_

 _Pretty much wrapping up.  Poltergeists aren’t something to mess around with.  You were right to say we couldn’t handle this one alone._  There was a pause, and then Sam’s phone chimed again.   _You finished a case?  I thought you were the one who said that hunting alone was a bad idea?_

_If you have the option, Claire.  I didn’t.  It’s not a big deal.  Did you come through the case okay?_

_Yeah.  Dean got a little banged up but I guess it’s helpful to have an angel around for that kind of thing._

He glanced at his cast and raised his eyebrows.  It didn’t respond.   _I guess so.  You want to stick with those guys or do you want me to bring you somewhere?_ From a purely selfish perspective, he would prefer that she stay with the others.  He could only offer her so much protection or training right now, after all, and he wasn’t enthusiastic about picking her up while stuck in the cast.  At the same time, he’d made her a promise and he’d stick with it.

 _I’ll keep you posted,_ she texted, and then went silent.

Sam made a face at his phone.  Now that?  That was just rude.

He took a couple of days to do some more research into the Cleveland case.  On the one hand, no one was actually dying up there.  On the other, someone was actually assaulting people, bleeding them dangerously dry and then leaving them for dead.  Sam had endured that.  He could still remember Alex’s brother declaring him to be an “empty keg,” his twangy voice cutting through the haze of hypovolemia.  That and the knowledge, the sure knowledge, that Dean had been awake and aware the entire time that Sam had been silently buying him time.  Awake and just… hanging out.

He shivered.  He couldn’t in good conscience be the one hanging out.  It was only a matter of time before someone didn’t find one of the victims.  After two days of hanging around in Ravenna, he got into his truck and drove up to Cleveland.  It wasn’t as though he could get much more research done remotely; not in a case like this.

He got a motel in the right part of town and got to work.  All of the attacks had happened in the Warehouse district, near the bars and clubs.  Sam knew that Dean would call the look he was giving the computer qualified as a bitchface, at least in Dean’s book, but he’d stick out like a sore thumb there.  Well, maybe he could find a way to make that work out to his advantage.

He studied the victimology carefully when he got ready that night, and took a cab to one of the more mellow-looking bars down there.  It was the kind of place he’d have chosen if he’d had the option anyway, not a pool table or dartboard in sight, just some low lighting and some televisions with the game running low in the background.  The place carried some local craft beers, which Sam ordered, and the bartender gave a sympathetic grimace when she saw his crutches.  “Busted leg, huh?  That’s tough,” she told him.

Truth be told, the bartender was pretty.  She had long, dark hair and an aristocratic nose; olive-toned skin and full, dark lips.  He let his lips curve up a little bit, the most he really got these days.  “It’s not so bad,” he told her, earning a smile and a little blush.  “It’s not fun, but I’ve definitely had worse.”  He blushed.  She probably heard that kind of thing all the time, but really a broken leg wasn’t a big deal for him.   “Slow night tonight?” he asked, glancing around the sparsely populated bar

She shrugged.  “Little bit.  Everyplace is kind of feeling it, you know?  Ever since that maniac started up.”

After that it didn’t take long to get her to open up.  He’d been good at this once, back before he’d just taken a back seat to… well, everything.  Once upon a time dealing with witnesses had been his job almost entirely, and it had been so easy to tease out a few details without the witness ever realizing that they’d been interviewed at all.  She told Sam all he could want to know.  One of the victims had been a patron of this very bar, in fact, but no one else had been a suspect.  No one had left at the same time, and it had been another slow night so she’d know.  The attacks had only started up about a month ago.

He got a couple more beers, and a salad that he ate about half of.  The waitress – Eleni – told him outright that she wouldn’t mind if he stuck around until her shift was over at one, and he considered.  He wasn’t much of one for casual hook-ups, but it had been a damn long time since anyone had seriously looked at him that way.  It had been a long time since he’d wanted anyone to look at him at all.  “I’ll come back,” he promised her.  “I’ve got some stuff I need to do, but I’ll be back at one.”

She winked.  “I’ll see you then.”

Sam eased himself out the door on his crutches.

He felt the eyes on him as he hobbled out the door and down the road.  At the first opportunity, he ducked down a convenient alley.  The vampire was probably expecting easy meat.  After all, Sam was clearly injured and most people would have had a balance issue.  Most people hadn’t spent eighteen years in John Winchester’s Army, and anyone who thought a broken leg got them out of training was in for some heavy punishment.  And years of yoga after that had helped with the balance.

When he sensed his stalker come close enough behind him (a cold presence, and he’d long since ceased to be comfortable with anyone giving off that much of a chill behind him) he spun around and raised his machete to the creature’s neck.

The vampire raised his hands.  The man stood about six feet tall, strawberry blond hair with a goatee and gray eyes.  “Nice,” he said, eyes wide in a combination of fear and admiration.  “I had no idea you even knew I was here.  Your heart rate didn’t even twitch.  You’re good, buddy.”

Sam snorted.  He wasn’t good.  Everyone knew that.  “I’ve done this before,” he corrected, keeping the blade at the vampire’s throat.  “What’s with the attacks?”

The vampire blinked, and then showed his fangs.  “Look.  That ain’t me.  I’m here for the same reason you are.”

“I very much doubt that,” Sam scoffed.

The creature rolled his eyes.  “You’re a friend of Lenore’s right?”

Sam hesitated.  “You knew Lenore?”

“Yeah.  She taught me a lot.  Before, you know, Eve.  After that whole thing, you know, I was able to get control over myself again.  I live on bagged blood now.  Entirely.  Name’s Tom.”

Sam pressed his lips together.  He’d made plenty of mistakes, trusting monsters.  At the same time, trusting Lenore and her nest, that hadn’t been a mistake, and hadn’t been widely known.  “How’d you recognize me?”

“Eli could draw.”  Tom shrugged, as best he could without moving the machete.  “They wanted to make sure we all knew which Winchester was the reasonable one if anything ever happened.”

Sam huffed out a little laugh.  No one had ever thought of him as reasonable.  He shouldn’t trust this guy.  He should chop off his head and go about his merry way.  At the same time, he’d proved that some monsters were okay.  Were people.  Besides, did it matter if this guy drank him dry?  So he’d miss his last date.  Logically, it seemed there wasn’t much risk here..  “Right,” he said, sheathing his machete.  “So you’re here to hunt down someone who’s not playing by the rules?”

Tom shrugged.  “He’s not exactly keeping a low profile, is he?”  He rubbed at his neck.  “Is the other one around here somewhere?”

“He’s working a job somewhere else.  Come on, let’s keep moving.”

Tom nodded.  “Figure you wouldn’t want to move more than you had to, what with the crutches and all.  What happened?”

“A tree fell on me.  And it’s best to keep moving.”

“A tree fell on you?  Figure you’d be faster than that.”

“I was busy killing the witch who made it fall at the time.”  Sam felt one corner of his mouth curl up.

“Right, that would do it.  I guess.  You kill a lot of witches?”

“Only if they’re killing people.”  Sam sighed.  “So.  What do you know?”

“Well, our guy is careful.”

Sam stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.  “Dude.  He’s ripping people’s throats out and leaving them to die in the middle of the street.”

Tom shook his head, laughing.  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to stop once you’ve started?”

Sam closed his eyes against the memory.  “You’d be surprised.”

Tom raised ruddy eyebrows.  “Seriously?”

“What, you thought I was squeaky clean?”  Sam gave a low chuckle.  “I’m about as far from that as you can get.  That doesn’t change the fact that he’s got to be stopped before he does kill someone outright, man.”

Tom nodded.  “I agree.  I’m just not sure that he needs his head taken off.”

Sam opened his mouth and shut it again.  “Can you maybe explain that a little better?”

“So I’m not entirely sure,” Tom said, holding his hands up.  “And if it turns out that the dude’s just one of the bad ones I’ll be right there with you, swinging for the fences.  But the way this person’s doing it – leaving the vics out in public where they’re right there and could be found by anyone, _are_ being found by anyone – makes it seem like they’re trying to avoid being caught.  It’s almost like he’s trying to feed without killing.  He could be a new vamp, a fledgling whose maker just kind of turned him and sent him out there without any information, any training.”

Sam nodded slowly.  He could remember a blonde, a poor innocent victim who thought she’d just taken a new club drug.  They hadn’t known enough then, couldn’t help her transition to animal blood or teach her to use blood bags.  One more stain on his record.  “So let’s say you’re right.  I’ve met some other newly turned vampires.  Trying to get through to them is, uh, challenging.”

Tom grinned, all teeth.  “I’ve got ways, man.  I might ask for a hand here and there.  But I can do it.”

“You trying to build a nest?”

Tom shook his head.  “If they want to, that’s one thing.  I’m more of a loner myself, ever since Eve.  Ever since Lenore.  But I’m not the old school, Luther kind of vampire.  We need to be more adaptable.  We’re practically extinct, between the Leviathan and hunters.  We need to be able to adapt and live with people instead of just feeding off of them.”  He shrugged.  “I want to help make that a reality, you know?  No one wants to be the last living one of his species.”

“No, you don’t.”  Sam, after all, was the last living abomination.  “Do you have any ideas as to who your guy might be?”  Tom didn’t, but he had a good idea of where the guy might be hunting.  “Alright then.  We’ve got some prime bait.”

“Woah.  No way, dude.  I’m not going to be the guy who used  Dean Winchester’s little brother as vampire bait.” Tom crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head.  “Nuh-uh.  Nothing doing.”

“First of all,” Sam said when he’d finished swallowing his frustration, “I’m going out there whether or not you want me to.  Secondly, things are different now.  Dean’s not going to be worried.”  He could still hear Dean’s voice.   _I wish it was you up there instead of Charlie._  “Besides.  He’ll never even know.”

Tom sighed, but in the end Sam got his way.  The pair agreed to meet up outside a bar called Boot the next night and took to a park bench to make plans until Sam needed to be back at the bar to meet up with Eleni.

Eleni seemed almost surprised to see him, but in the very best of ways.  She offered him a ride back to his motel room, which he accepted.  Once she’d passed through the salt line and the devil’s trap and the angel warding, he caught her into an embrace.  She pulled him down and captured his mouth in a searing kiss, and he followed her lead.  It had, after all, been a long time.

It didn’t take long before they were both naked, and just the sight and smell of her got him sweaty.  Her dark eyes drank him in, hungry and eager, and she soon let him explore her body with fingers and tongue.

This, more than the actual moment of his own release, was what he enjoyed about sex.  It was an objective measure of his own skill and talent.  If he rolled a nipple gently between his fingers, like _this,_ it earned him a moan of delight.  If he then gathered that same nipple into his mouth and sickled gently, while at the same time paying the same amount of attention to the opposite with his other hand, then the moan was twice as loud and appreciative.  And then, later, if he moved his head lower and lapped at the cleft between those muscular legs of hers with his tongue, and maybe did a little more exploring with his fingers –

Yes, just like that.  He felt her clench around his fingers even as she cried out in her ecstasy.  “Holy shit,” she gasped as she came down, the last aftershocks finally leaving her.

Sam smiled for the first time in what felt like months.  This, at least, he could do.  Dean had hated the very idea of Sam and sexual activity, but that wasn’t a problem anymore.

After a few seconds, Eleni glanced at him and blushed.  “Let me take care of you, Sam.”

“You don’t have to,” he told her.  “It’s okay.”  And it was.  He was already perfectly satisfied anyway, more than he’d expected to get out of the trip to Cleveland in the first place.

“I want to,” she said, stroking his face.  He flinched before he leaned into the touch.  “Is it that weird for someone to want to give you some attention too?”  She laid him gently on his back and kissed him before grabbing the condom and unrolling it onto his cock and then slowly, tantalizingly mounting him.

Eleni felt incredible on top of him, around him.  He kept his hands on her hips at first, more for someplace to put them than anything else, and just hung on for the ride for a minute.

Then he sought out her clit.  She’d been enjoying herself plenty, but now she cried out, clawing at his arms.  He grinned as she rode him to completion, only then allowing himself to spill into the condom.  He caught Eleni as she fell forward and helped her dismount, then carefully discarded the condom.

She stayed for about an hour, dozing happily in his arms, before she regretfully told him that she needed to back home.  He thanked her for the night; she’d made him feel better than he had in years, since before Hell, before Dean’s death, before his own death really.  Maybe he hadn’t felt that good since Madison.

She’d had a good time, or at least she said she had, and they exchanged numbers at her insistence “in case you stick around in town, or pass through here again.”  Still, she didn’t really know him.  She wouldn’t want to, if he called.  If he tried to build something more than a roll in the hay or two.

He walked her to her car and made sure she drove away okay before retreating to a room that reeked of sex to take a shower.  Then he checked his phone.  Claire had texted him when he’d just been in the middle of things.   _What are you working on?_

 _Vampire case,_ he told her.  There was no reason to lie about it.

_Should you be doing that?  I thought you said you were hurt in the last hunt._

Sam grinned a little.   _I said I got a little banged up.  It’s not a problem.  I found a hunting partner for this one anyway._

She paused.   _For real?  Anyone I know?_

Sam chuckled.  Like Claire knew anyone.   _No.  No one either of them knows either.  Don’t worry about it. I’ve got this one covered._

_We could come and help out.  Should be done with the Poltergeist by now._

_I’m all set.  I can come and pick you up, if you want to move on from them, as soon as this one’s over.  It shouldn’t be long._

She didn’t reply, and he went to sleep in his sweatpants.

Morning found him when someone started banging on the door, fast and furious.  Sat up in bed, bolt upright, angel blade at the ready.  “Who’s there?” he shouted.  It wouldn’t be Tom, it was too early.

“Sam, it’s me,” came Cas’ terse voice.  “I cannot enter your room, Sam.  You must let me in.”

Sam closed his eyes and flopped back down onto the mediocre pillows.  He counted to ten.  The pounding didn’t stop.  “Sam?” yelled Cas.

Sam reached out and grabbed his phone.   He dialed Cas’ number and waited patiently for the angel to pick up.  “Sam,” his occasional ally said, in exactly the same tone.  “You have warded the room against angels and I cannot enter.  You must break the wards so I can get in.”

Sam let out a long, slow breath.  “Is Dean hurt?”

The angel paused and Sam could almost see him blinking.  “No, Dean is not hurt.  Why –?“

“Is Claire hurt?”

“No, she’s with me, right here.  Sam –“

“Are you hurt?”

“I am an angel of the Lord, very few –“

“Then why are you here?”

That shut Castiel up pretty damn quickly.  “I’m here to see you, Sam.  We need to talk about your latest bid for independence.  We are worried.  Your –“  He cut himself off and Sam could hear Claire’s insistent murmuring in the background.  “Claire and I wished to see you.”

Sam closed his eyes again.  He could just hunker down in here, but Claire might use a brick to break the door down or something.  He sighed and struggled to his feet, then made his way over to the door.

Both Claire and Castiel blinked when they saw Sam.  He remembered, after a moment, that he hadn’t put a shirt on.  “Um,” Claire said, jaw hanging open.  “Nice abs.”

Sam knew his face had turned scarlet; he could tell just from how hot it felt.    “My eyes are up here, Cas,” Sam pointed out, gesturing to the angel.  “What’s going on?”  

“You said ‘a little banged up, Sam,” Cas accused, squinting at him.  “You have a contraption on your leg meant to immobilize a broken bone.  That is not a ‘little’ banged up!  And there are all kinds of bruises on your collarbone!”

Sam rolled his eyes.  “It’s just a broken leg, Cas,” he said, wishing that they’d at least brought him some coffee. “In Winchester terms this is basically a scraped knee.”

“Not when you were alone!”

“Actually yeah,” Sam told him.  “Also when I was alone.  I did survive four years at Stanford, you know.  It’s just a break.  It’s fine.”

“And the bruises?” Cas pointed at Sam’s collarbone.

Claire snickered.  “Those are hickies, moron.”

“Oh.   _Oh!_ ”  Cas looked around the room and sniffed.  “You’ve had a woman in this room!  A human woman!”  His eyes narrowed and he looked back at Sam.

“Are we really here to talk about my sex life?” Sam asked, leaning against the door and wishing he could go back to sleep or at least brush his teeth.

“I… I was not aware that you were seeking such things…”

“They’re women, Cas.  Not ‘things.’  And bisexual.  So yeah.  I like men.  I like women.  I like other genders, too.  Why are we standing in my motel room doorway at seven thirty in the morning talking about who I want to sleep with?  Aren’t you supposed to be working on a poltergeist?”

But Castiel had wandered back to his dreadful Cadillac, leaving Sam alone with a vaguely apologetic Claire.


	5. We Built These Paper Mountains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam makes some new friends.

Sam watched Cas go, and shook his head.  He had no idea what had just happened here, and given that it was Cas he wasn’t entirely sure that he’d ever fully understand.  If the angel wanted to let him in on Secret Angel Business he’d do so, in his own time, probably at about the time that Secret Angel Business came back to bite Sam in the ass.  “Alright, Claire.  What brings you and Cas by this morning?”  He stepped aside to let the teen into the room.

            She glanced around.  “You’re seriously hunting with a broken leg?”

            Sam snorted.  “You haven’t spent enough time with Dean.  You haven’t heard the patented John Winchester response to injuries.  ‘People are dying, boy.  You willing to tell their families that you couldn’t get up off your lazy ass and save them because your damn leg was hurt, princess?’”  He smirked, fairly impressed with his own impression of his father.  “Trust me, this isn’t that big a deal.”

            She shook her head.  “Sometimes it sounds like your dad was two different people.”

            Sam thought about it for a second.  “That’s actually a pretty fair assessment.  Seriously, Claire.  I thought you were happy working with Dean and Cas.  I wouldn’t have come out here to do these jobs if I’d known you wanted to ditch them.”

            “That job’s done.”  She shrugged her shoulders, blue eyes wide and innocent.  For a moment, just for a second, Sam suspected her motives.  “Cas and I figured you might want a hand with this one.  He was worried about you.  He thought you might be upset since you fought with Dean.”

            Sam rolled his eyes.  “It’s not really his MO to be concerned about my feelings when I fight with Dean.”  He grabbed some clothes and headed into the bathroom.  “Let me get dressed, at least.  We can grab breakfast or something.”

            He threw some clothes on and brushed his teeth.  Then he hobbled back out into the main room and grabbed Claire so they could go grab breakfast.  Castiel had been staring into space as he sat behind the wheel of his Caddy, but he emerged to join them when Claire prodded him.  Sam didn’t understand exactly why, if everything tasted like molecules, but he supposed he didn’t need to.  Cas was going to do Cas things; it was part of what made him so endearing.

            The little breakfast-and-lunch joint wasn’t too crowded when they arrived.  They got a seat easily and ordered.  As it turned out, the angelic sweet tooth carried through to breakfast items and maple syrup didn’t taste like molecules if it was pure enough, which made Sam shake his head a little.  He stuck with yogurt and fruit, not that he ate much of it.  “So, Sam,” Claire began.  “How did you break your leg?”

            He blushed.  “Tree fell on it.”

            “A tree fell on it?”  The blonde raised an eyebrow.  “While you were meditating in a forest, talking to little birdies like Snow White, or…”

            Sam endured a momentary image of himself in Snow White’s dress, and banished it from his mind with coffee.  “No.  I was on a hunt.”

            “A hunt.”  Cas’ eyes narrowed as he squinted at him.  “Sam, did you attempt to hunt that witch near Ravenna?”

            Sam took a mouthful of yogurt.  “I did hunt that witch near Ravenna.”  He didn’t look right at Cas; he knew that the angel was still ashamed of having been caught up in Rowena’s spell.

            “Did you find a counterspell?”

            “No.  It’s too fast acting, there is no counter.  I did find some preventatives – think the barrier method – to prevent the spell from working on a person who is hunting a witch that might have that one in their arsenal.  Then I threw a knife at his throat.”  He shrugged.  “It wasn’t a very complex hunt.”

            Claire chuckled.  “Dean is down there right now, hunting that same witch.”

            Sam clenched his hand around his spoon, but forced it to relax.  “He’ll find a pile of ashes and a couple of missing tree limbs from where I made a splint.”

            Cas sighed.  “Sam, I told you, you should leave this type of hunt to Dean.”

            Claire buried her face in her hands.  “Try not to speak, Castiel.”

            “I did the hunt, Cas.  Successfully, I might add.”  Sam glared at him.  “Sure, my leg is broken.  But I’m pretty sure that Dean wouldn’t have gotten the same resources I did, because of where they came from.  I’m not an idiot, Cas.  I’m perfectly capable of hunting without a babysitter.”

            “Your leg was broken.”  The thing with the angel was that, for all he had lived through as a human and among humans, he still didn’t have human mannerisms yet.  He didn’t move or gesticulate when he spoke, as a general rule, and he didn’t raise his voice when he spoke.  “You were injured, Sam.  You could still be out there in the woods, and no one would know.  Even Dean would not take on a witch like that without backup.”

            Sam snorted.  “So who’s his backup now?”

            Cas opened his mouth and shut it again.

            “Exactly.  I get that you’re not exactly president of my fan club, Cas.  I understand that I’m the abomination, I’m the ‘second biggest screw up,’ the ‘boy with the demon blood.’  But I’ve been doing this job, whether I wanted to or not, my whole life and I don’t actually suck at it.”  He kept his voice low so as not to attract attention, but anger coursed through his veins at the angel’s innocent expression.  “I’m not going to tolerate the whole ‘junior hunters club’ treatment anymore.  Either kill me or let me make my own way.”  He threw enough cash for all three breakfasts and tip down onto the table and crutched his way out of the diner.

            “Way to go, featherbrain,” he heard Claire tell Castiel as he left.

            Sam returned to the motel and took some ibuprofen for his leg, which was throbbing horribly by this point.  Tonight was going to suck, but he’d had worse and he needed to suck it up.  He’d made a promise, and he was going to keep it.  Besides, that fledgling vampire, if that was what they were dealing with, was going to cross the line sooner or later if they didn’t get help.

            A small part of Sam wanted to point out that Cas would have already healed Dean’s leg, probably without all the lecturing too.  But he didn’t waste energy being bitter about that.  Cas didn’t often offer to heal Sam, generally only when Dean was around, and Sam almost never asked.  He wasn’t here to mooch off their relationship and it wasn’t like the guy was a walking, talking morphine bottle or something.  He was a sentient being in his own right; if he wanted to do something like that he’d offer.

            He didn’t hear from Cas again for the rest of the day.  He did get a text from Claire.   _Cas says he’s sorry for upsetting you._

            Sam considered shooting his phone.   _He really isn’t, though._

            She didn’t reply.   He didn’t expect her to.  If Cas had actually been sorry, he’d have done the texting himself.  He knew how now, emoticons and everything.

            He went to meet Tom at the appointed time, pushing the latest round of Angel Drama out of his mind to focus on the case.  “Alright, we going to do this?” the vampire asked, grinning widely at the sight of Sam.

            The sight was a little creepy.  No one who actually knew Sam, knew who and what he was, was ever that happy to see him.  “Uh, yeah.  Yeah, we are.  Let’s go get the right perfume going.  Full disclosure, though.  I’ve picked up a… uh, a friend of my brother’s showed up this morning.  I didn’t fill him in on the plan but he’s kind of the smite first and ask questions later type.”

            “’Smite first and…’” Tom repeated.  “Wait – are we talking angel here?”

            Sam nodded.  “Yeah.  I’ll try to keep him out of the way but I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of the situation.”  He shrugged.  “He thinks I’m incompetent because I don’t kill monsters on sight.”

            Tom scratched his head.  “Aren’t angels technically monsters?”

            “Nothing technical about it.”  Sam set his jaw.  “This one’s just less of a dick than the rest.  Let’s do this.”  He closed his eyes and composed a silent prayer to Cas.   _Castiel, I’m sure you can hear this.  Whatever you see or think you see, it’s a plan.  Don’t interfere._   _I know you’re watching this._

            The pair went into Boot and got a beer each, then ordered a shot that Tom “accidentally” spilled all over Sam.  Now successfully reeking of cheap tequila, Sam hobbled out into the alleyway and slowly crutched between the buildings.  All of the data said that the attack should come in this area, and the fledgling seemed to prefer people who had been drinking and were alone.  Sam should be the perfect bait.

            A lone young woman ducked out of the back door of a restaurant.  The name had been scratched off the door; Sam suspected that the restaurant had been closed for some time, but he couldn’t be sure from back here.  The woman’s clothes looked filthy, but she’d been dressed for a night out on the town at some point.  Sam felt a moment of pity for the young vampire.  “You look lost,” the girl told him.

            “Could be,” Sam slurred.  “I don’t s’pose you know how to get to the sshtadium from hre?”

            She huffed out a little laugh and pounced.

            Sam never failed to be surprised by the speed of vampires.  It was a little bit of a turn on, to be honest, which probably meant that his pleasure, pain, and fear receptors in his brain were all kind of mixed up, but whatever.  It was too late to fix them now.  He had enough balance to spin, and his reflexes were still good enough that he was able to skate out of the way and let her hit the wall just as his machete rested against her neck.

            Tom appeared at his side, rushing in from the mouth of the alley to pin the newly-created vampire against the wall with his own preternatural strength.  The two hissed out their rage against each other with their fangs out in a display that sent the wrong kind of goosebumps up and down Sam’s spine.  “Put ‘em away, both of you,” he snapped.

            The vampires blinked at him, obeying his order.  “Sorry,” Tom told him.

            The younger vampire glared.  “What the hell is this, the monster police?”

            “Monster police.  I like that.” Sam huffed out a little laugh.  “You know what you’ve been doing.”

            “I haven’t killed anyone!” she said, straining just enough against the machete that it created a thin line of blood.

            “Cut that out,” Tom told her.  “Neither one of us wants to kill you, but if you cut your own fool head off we can’t do anything about that.”

            “We’re going to talk to you,” Sam said, meeting her eyes and letting some of what he’d been, the power he’d once wielded, show through.  “We’re pretty sure we can help you.  Can we trust you not to try to rip my throat out if I pull this back?”

            She snarled.  “Fine.”

            He pulled the machete back, but didn’t put it away.  “Alright.  I’m Sam.  This is Tom.”

            “Megyn,” she spat after a minute, sullen and grudging.

            “Alright, Megyn.  I’m guessing that you’ve figured out by now what was done to you.  Somehow you drank something and the colors seemed brighter, the light was too intense, the smells –“

            She shuddered.  “You can’t even begin to understand,” she said, holding her stomach.  “I can hear your heartbeat.”

            He nodded, putting a hand on her back almost as a reflex action.  “I haven’t undergone that specific thing, but –“

            “I have,” Tom grinned.  “I figured you were new at this when I saw what was happening.”

            “But I haven’t killed anyone!” Megyn protested, turning her head to look from the older vampire to the hunter.

            “No.  You have traumatized them all.  I get that you’re trying.  I do – believe me when I tell you that I get how hard it is to pull back when all you want is to drink until they’re dry.”  Sam swallowed hard.  Some days he still wanted to.  “The thing is, you keep going on the way you are, you’re going to lose control.  That’s going to bring you problems.”

            “It’s already brought you problems.  Fortunately it’s brought you problems in the best way possible,” Tom continued.  “It brought you Sam Winchester.  He’s a damn fine hunter, but he’ll listen and he’ll help you out if you’re not a danger to the public.  If you _can_ be helped.  Other hunters, they’ll just chop off your head and play soccer with it.  You’ve already seen that he’s capable.”

            She nodded.  “Didn’t expect that from a guy with a broken leg.  Is it really broken?”

            “Yep.”

            She shuddered.  “And you think you can help me… do what?”

            Tom reached into his jacket and pulled out a blood bag.  “I’m a big fan of A Negative myself.”  He stuck a stiff tube into the bag.

            “It’s like a sick kind of Capri-Sun,” Megyn observed, fangs descending.

            “It is.  But it’s safe, and it’s a hell of a lot better than drinking from struggling, angry people.  Go on.  It’s a freebie.”

            Sam looked away.  If he watched, he’d start thinking about flasks, and if he thought about flasks, he’d think about keeping a stash of demon blood on hand “just in case.”  “So,” he said as he heard the young woman start slurping behind him.  “I’m guessing that the one who made you didn’t exactly stick around to explain much of anything.”

            “Nothing,” she confirmed.  “You can turn around now.”

            The bag was empty.

            Sam reached into his jacket and pulled out a trocar.  “Okay.  First lesson?  This is dead man’s blood.  You can drink the blood of the living.  Even if it’s outside of a living body, like donated blood, you can drink it.  Don’t go thinking you can sneak into a morgue and take the stuff they empty out of a body.  It acts as a very potent sedative on you folks.  Anyone carrying it is a threat to you.”

            Tom nodded.  “The only thing that can kill you is beheading,” he added, wiping a little trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth.  “You’ll still feel pain, and if someone cuts off a limb or something you’ll have to put it back on, but the only thing you have to really worry about is losing your head.”

            “You can survive on animal blood,” Sam added.  “I don’t think it tastes great.  But it’s an option if bagged blood gets scarce.”

            “I’m not exactly looking to start up a nest,” Tom told her.  “But I’m willing to stick around for a little while and help you get your footing.”

            Sam frowned.  “Do you remember anything about the one who made you – who sired you, I mean?”

            Her expression darkened, and she shook her head.  “No,” she said.  “I don’t even remember drinking whatever.  I remember a mugging.  That’s all.”

            He exchanged glances with Tom.  “He’s got to know that’s not right.  Or she, I guess.  No reason to assume they’re male.”

            Tom acknowledged this with a nod of his head.  “You thinking of hunting them?”

            “No real clues to go on.  I’ll look for similar attacks, but the kind of self-control Megyn’s exhibited?  Most newly turned vampires don’t have that.”  He gave her a little smile.  “It’s pretty impressive.  If I get any hints, I’ll try to do something about it but I’m not going Captain Ahab about it.”

            Megyn grabbed his crutches for him.  “Sorry about trying to, uh, drink your blood, Sam.”

            “It’s cool.  You’re not the first.”  He passed his number to both vampires.  “It looks like you guys have things well in hand.  Give me a call if you need anything.”

            With that, Sam made his way back to the motel.

            Claire showed up the next morning with coffee and donuts.  “Peace offering?”

            He huffed out a little laugh.  “You’ve got nothing to make peace for, Claire.  Castiel isn’t your fault.”

            “He kind of is, though.  I mean, I encouraged him to come.”  She blushed.  “I knew he was worried about you.”

            “Ah.”  He broke his donut in half.  “Claire, listen.  Dean and Cas, they have a very special relationship –“

            “Oh, gross!”

            His face went scarlet.  “They’re not – no.  Dean’s straight.  As much as anyone can be sure of another person’s sexuality, I’m pretty sure Dean’s straight. But they have this bond, right?  This very _profound bond_ ,” he recalled with a roll of his eyes, “and Cas is always going to follow Dean’s lead.  There’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

            She smirked.  “You’re pretty sure about that whole Cas following Dean thing.”

            “I’ve had time to adjust.”  He broke each half of the donut in half again.  “It doesn’t rate dwelling on, okay?  So.  Tell me about the poltergeist.  Dean’s okay, right?”

            “Pssh.  Yeah.  I mean, it had him upside down up a tree by his underwear at one point, but you know.  Cas fixed that.”  She waved a hand.  “It was intense,” she said after a moment.  “I mean, really intense.  You could feel the evil of the thing, you know?”

            He nodded.  “When I first started hunting with Dean again, after Stanford, we went back to the house where I was born.  It had been haunted by a poltergeist.  You could feel it miles away.  It reached out – I forget where we were, but I could feel it’s presence states away.”

            She looked at him a little oddly for that one, but nodded.  “I’d never been around something like that.  Angels, sure.  Demons, when I was a kid.  But that was just so different.”

            He broke up the pieces of his donut, each into its own equal-sized little section.  “Each creature we fight is different.  That’s why it’s important to learn and understand.”

            She nodded and slouched back in her chair for a moment, then leaned forward again.  “So what was that last night?  Cas said you didn’t kill a single vampire but got their numbers!”

            Sam laughed out loud.  “That’s rich.  Yeah.  Not everything that’s inhuman needs to be exterminated, Claire.  The vampire who was here?  She was actually trying her best not to kill people.  She was very new at the whole vampire thing, but she was trying to be one of the good ones.”

            “Dean seems to think that all monsters need killing.”

            “Ask him when my turn is,” Sam spat out before he could stop himself.

            Claire froze.  “Uh, say what now?”

            “Sorry.  I just… look.  Forget I said anything.”

            “I don’t think so.”  She shook her head.  “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

            “Then ask Castiel what I am.  The technical term, please.”  He crumbled one of the donut pieces into crumbs.  “So.”  He forced a big smile onto his face.  “What’s the plan?  Still want to head out to Connecticut?  Maybe someplace else?  Or do you want to keep up with Dean and Castiel?”

            “With lines like that I’m not sure I feel comfortable leaving you alone,” she told him.  “’Ask him when my turn is?’  The hell does that mean, Sam?”

            He sighed and broke up another section of donut.  “They didn’t tell you?  The demon blood – not just what you saw way back when, but what’s been in me since I was a baby and what I can do with it – makes me a monster.  Dean told me years ago that it made him want to hunt me, that it meant I was a monster, that there was no saving me.  He told me a few weeks ago, when Charlie was killed, he wished that it was me up on that pyre instead of her. And why not?  At least she’s... you know?  Clean.”  Another section of donut met its end and he looked down.  “Anyway.  The whole point is that those vampires didn’t need to be taken out.”

            Claire opened her mouth, then she sighed and shook her head.  “But the other ones did?”

            “Coming after you?  Yeah.  They did.  In this case, Tom feeds on bagged blood.  Megyn was newly turned.  The attacks we were seeing in Cleveland were her way of trying not to harm her victims.  Tom’s going to show her how to live like he does, and she’s going to do it, too.”  He shrugged and crushed yet another donut section, feeling it turn to sand under his fingers.

            “And you just trust them.”

            “Tom was friends with a vampire I knew years ago.  It’s possible to do.  It’s hard to do, but if he was friends with Lenore then he’s got a better chance than most.  And if, as a newly-turned vampire, Megyn was able to pull herself back and keep from draining her prey then she’s probably got the willpower to pull it off.”  He ran a hand through his hair and took a sip of coffee.  “That’s kind of…”  He looked away, thinking.  “That’s kind of a fundamental difference between my family and me, the way they do things and they way they see the world, versus the way I see the world.”  

            She bit her lip and took the donut remains away from him.  “What do you mean?”

            He hesitated for a second, trying to think of the best way to phrase what he wanted to say.  “My dad, and now my brother, they have a very us-versus-them view of the world, of hunting.  It’s humans versus everything else, right?  With a very narrow definition of what makes someone human.  Most hunters share that viewpoint.  A witch, for example, isn’t human by that definition, because she has abilities beyond those of a typical suburban soccer mom.  A psychic isn’t human either, according to most hunters.”

            “Okay.  You don’t agree.”

            “I’d have to shoot myself then, wouldn’t I?”  He shook his head.  “I am psychic.  I use elements of witchcraft all the time.  For them – Dad, Dean, even Bobby – there was this war, this kind of all consuming need to fight.  They’d lost something.  I never had that.  I lost someone too, eventually, but it was different.”  He shrugged.  “I guess it’s because I was always part of what they were fighting that I never got that whole ‘all non-humans must die’ mentality.

            “Anyway, the whole point is that yes, there are some things that are completely evil.  A black dog?  It’s basically rabid.  It’s always going to act out against people.  It’s always going to need to be put down.  Or a rawhead, or a poltergeist.  Demons?  They’re evil, they define evil, but sometimes you’ll want the same things.  Don’t trust them without a lot of leverage.”  He shivered.  “Even then, never go against your gut.”

            “And vampires can be okay sometimes?”

            “Vampires can be okay sometimes.  Anything with free will can be okay sometimes.  Of course, anything with free will can also be a manipulative dick too.  But hey.”  He forced a little grin.  “I guess I’d rather not kill someone – human or not – until they _have_ to be killed, for public safety.”

            “Makes sense, I guess.  Except angels.  I really don’t like them.”  She glared at the door.

            “As a general rule, I don’t either.”

            They fell quiet for a moment.  “Are you going to let him in?” she asked then.

            “Who, Cas?”  He snorted.  “No.”

            She sighed.  “He’s really worried about you.  He does care, you know.”

            “He’s here to keep an eye on me for Dean, to make sure I don’t break the world again.”  Sam stood up.  “Which isn’t going to be an issue.  So it’s not a problem, okay?”

            Her face softened.  “Is it really that hard to grasp that he actually cares about you for you?  Because you’re a good person and he doesn’t want you to get hurt?”

            Sam found himself reminded of Eleni’s words from a couple of nights before, but he shook his head.  The situation was completely different.  “Not Castiel.  Not me.  He’s got his priorities.”

            “You think he can only care about one Winchester at a time.”

            “I think he only _does_ care about one Winchester at a time.”  Sam forced a little smile.  “Come on, Claire.  Out with it.  What’s really going on?”

            “Nothing, nothing, it’s just he was worried about you and I thought it would be good for you to have someone watching over you and helping you out, you know?  Showing you some affection or something.”

            “Winchesters aren’t good with affection.  It confuses us.”  He opened up the laptop in his version of a subtle hint.  “I think I found a good candidate for a haunting on Blennerhasset Island in West Virginia, if you’re interested.”

            She made a face.  “Okay-- wait. How are there islands in West Virginia?”

            “It’s in the Ohio River.  It should be a good one.  It might be a haunting, it might be a cursed object, and we won’t know until we get there.”

            She bit her lip.  “I’ll go, if we can bring Castiel.”

            He shook his head.  “Cas means Dean, and then I’m twiddling my thumbs while Dean looks for something to throw him into a tombstone.  No way.”

            “What if I get him to promise not to bring Dean along?” the teen offered.

            Sam sighed.  “If you really want to spend time with Castiel, I mean, go ahead.  I won’t try to stop you but I’m just –“

            She rolled her head back on her shoulders.  “Sa-am!” she whined, throwing her whole upper body into the act.  “Come on!  Just let me bring Castiel!”

            “Ugh.  Fine.  But if he acts like a dick I’m banishing him to Heaven.”  Sam rolled his eyes.

            They left the next day, Sam finding an additional possible case in the Wayne National Forest that he opted not to share with anyone.  Claire rode with Cas for the three-hour drive, leaving Sam alone with his thoughts.  He wasn’t a fan of that any more than he was a fan of the extra scrutiny.

            “I assume you will want two rooms,” Castiel told him stiffly when they found a motel.

            “I don’t object,” he said.  “But why?”

            “In case you seek out another woman.”

            Claire blushed scarlet.

            “That really bothered you that much?” Sam raised an eyebrow.  “Seriously?”

            Cas pursed his lips together.  “It’s behavior I expect from your brother.  Not from you.”

            “I’m going to go out and buy lady things,” Claire told them, then charged out the door without looking back.

            Sam glared at the door, wondering why the teenaged escape artist was allowed such freedom and he was not.  Still, he sat down at the table.  “I get that Dean doesn’t approve of me having a sex life,” he said slowly, “and it had been years since I’d even tried, literally, but seriously.  It’s just sex.”

            “I understand that, Sam.  It just surprised me.  I was under the impression that you no longer had interests of a sexual nature.”

            Sam opened his mouth.  “Why would you make an assumption like that?”

            “Your brother said you didn’t.”

            “What would Dean know about it?”

            “He knows everything about you.”

            “Apparently not,” Sam smirked.  “Look.  It’s not something I ever did a lot of, the casual sex thing, but everyone needs a feeling of connection to another person, and that was the only way I was going to get it.”

            “You don’t feel connected to Dean and to me?”  Cas’ expression, usually so wooden, looked downright hurt.  For a moment Sam wanted to take it all back.

            Then he remembered why he was out here, alone.  Remembered why his leg was in a cast and why Dean would never have been allowed to suffer such an indignity – not since Cas got off his God trip, anyway.  “Cas,” he said, “no.  I’m not part of what you and Dean have and we all know it.  You work better without me and I’m not doing too badly by myself.”

            “You have a broken leg!” the angel roared.

            “So what?” Sam shot back.  “So it’s broken!  People get hurt on hunts and it’s never bothered you when I got hurt on hunts before!  At least it’s a broken leg and not another concussion.  Neither of which has anything to do with my sex life!  I don’t get why you’re okay with Dean screwing anything that moves but the idea of me having one consensual encounter once in – is it three years? – is cause for alarm.”

            “Like I said, it surprised me.  I didn’t know you were looking for a sexual partner.  I would have found you an acceptable partner had you asked.”

            Sam stared at Cas.   “What do you know about what I would want in a partner?”

            “Well I know what you don’t want,” Cas spat back, and stormed out again.

            All Sam could do was gape after Castiel like a fish.  Cas couldn’t have meant what that sounded like.  No, that would be too… too good.  Too easy.  Too convenient.  Too much like something Sam wanted, and he knew better.  That was just Cas’ typical inability to understand human communications.  

He buried his head in his hands.  This would have been hilarious if it had happened to someone else.


	6. I Believe I've Waited Long Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam has an encounter with the divine.

Claire returned about an hour after Cas left.  “Since you’re alone I can only guess that it didn’t go well,” she said, flopping down into a chair.

            He looked sharply up at her.  “Define ‘well,’” he sighed.

            She recovered quickly, he had to give her that much.  He guessed she’d had to, out on the streets.  “Well he’s not in here right now, is he?  You’re not talking.  What happened?”

            Sam rubbed his temples.  “He said he wanted… he said he would have found ‘partners’ for me if I wanted. I guess now I’m too incompetent to do that for myself too?”  He raised his arms up at his sides and dropped them again.  “I can honestly say that I have no clue what’s going on in his head.”

            “I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean you can’t find your own hook-ups, Sam.”  She pinched the bridge of her nose, the gesture far too old for her years.  “Didn’t you say you once had a crush on him?”

            “Sure, years ago.  I’m over it, I promise.”  It was a lie, but after all these years it slid easily off his tongue.  “I told you us hunting together was a bad idea, Claire.”

            “You hunted together for Dean, didn’t you?”

            “We both love Dean.  And trust me, there was plenty of tension there.”

            She smirked.  “I’ll bet.”  She stood up.  “I’ll go unruffle his feathers.  You… do Sam things.  I don’t know.  Research.  Whatever.  I refuse to surrender.”

            She ran out of the room and Sam stared at the blank laptop screen for a minute.  Then he shook his head.  Claire was probably trying to set him and Cas up or something.  On the one hand he supposed that was sweet.  She knew about his youthful crush and was trying to help out.  On the other, she was trying to push something that Sam said he no longer wanted and that Castiel could never lower himself to contemplate.

            A quick examination of the deaths that had brought them to Parkersburg showed some interesting commonalities between the victims.  All of the victims were Mexican-American – not just Latin, but of Mexican extraction.  They’d all been to the state park at Blennerhasset Island.  And they’d all died from having their heart literally explode sometime after they’d returned to Parkersburg.  “Deep in the heart of Texas,” Sam chuckled softly, clicking through the autopsy reports.

            Assuming that they were dealing with a ghost, that strongly suggested that they were dealing with the spirit of Harman Blennerhassett, who had built the mansion that gave the state of West Virginia the excuse to build the park.  He’d been imprisoned for treason in a plot that had probably been an attempt to wrest control of Texas away from Spain, the same plot in which Aaron Burr had been implicated, and the scandal had broken the colonist.  It would certainly have given him a grudge, and it would be enough to tether him to the world of the living.

            The blatant racism was certainly true to his period too.

            Still, the possibility that they were dealing with a cursed object couldn’t be discounted.  The only way to figure it out would be to interview the witnesses directly and then visit the site.  He went to grab Claire in the other room, only to find her deep in conversation with Castiel.

            “He acts like I do not know him, like I’ve never been there for him,” he heard Cas telling Claire.  “Why would he feel this way?  I pulled him out of the Cage!”

            _Half of me,_ Sam thought viciously.   _And then you let me twist, knowing that you’d botched the job.  Followed by making sure I’d be a liability to Dean forever, which wasn’t even about me.  But hey, who’s bitter?_

            He checked himself for the thoughts.  They weren’t productive.  Instead, he knocked on the door.  “Hey, Claire,” he greeted when she opened the door.  He ignored Cas’ look of reproach.  “I’m about to go interview some witnesses; I was wondering if you wanted to come along.  I’m trying to figure out if the deaths are being caused by a ghost or a cursed object.”

            “Wouldn’t it be better to bring an angel along?” Cas asked.  “Then there would be no uncertainty.  You would simply know.”

            Sam counted to ten.  “That won’t be necessary, Cas.”  Claire, still holding the door open, stepped on his good foot.  “But if you feel compelled to come and talk to people you’re welcome to do so.”  He glared at Claire.

            She gave him a look of innocence.  “So what’s different if it’s a cursed object versus a ghost?”

            “Well, I don’t have a curse box with me,” Sam admitted.

            “So we will call Dean and he will bring one from the bunker,” Cas said triumph radiating from his face.  “This will please you both.”

            Sam sighed.  “Claire, can you give us a minute?  Again?”

            She had the good grace to look guilty this time as she went about going over to Sam’s room.

            “You’re angry again,” Cas observed.

            “You keep trying to force me and Dean back together.”  Sam crossed his arms over his chest and tried to maintain his composure.  “You know that’s not what I want.  You know that’s not what he wants.”

            “But I know that’s what you both need.  He’s angry, about Charlie –“

            “Who you were supposed to be guarding,” Sam pointed out.

            Cas nodded.  “I was.  Sam, Dean is free of the Mark but he is still affected by his time with the Mark.  He remembers that in his head, you were at fault for Charlie’s death and he never saw any reason to change that assessment.  He still doesn’t.  He won’t if he doesn’t have his brother around to counter those thoughts with love and devotion.”

            “That hasn’t gotten me far before, Cas.  We both know that the word ‘forgiveness’ isn’t in Dean’s vocabulary.”  He hung his head.

            “He has forgiven me much.”

            “Not helping.”

            Cas looked away.  “This is not going well.  Claire tells me that you believe that I have come here to monitor your behavior and performance and report back to Dean, and every time we speak I can see that I offend you.  She also tells me that you’ve expressed some dangerous ideas –“

            “Damn it,” Sam hissed.

            “You’re angry again.”

            _Damn right I’m angry._  Sam kept the words to himself, but couldn’t hold back the shake of his head.  “I said that in confidence.”

            “She was scared for you.  She thinks you believe yourself to be a monster, Sam.”  Cas stepped forward.  “That you think that we believe – Dean and I – believe you to be a monster.”

            “Don’t you?.”  Sam met his eyes.  “You said as much when you first met me.  And what is it that you said I was?  An abomination?  Too unclean to even consider fighting the Whore of Babylon?”

            “I’m sorry if it offended you.”  He looked away.

            “It’s not a matter of offending or not offending, Cas.  It’s a matter of not getting my…”  He rethought his words.  “It’s a matter of knowing where I stand.  I know better than to think I’m ever going to be anything but Dean’s screw-up little brother with you.  And that’s – well, it is what it is.  I can accept it.  I can.  But I’m not okay with you screwing around with me and pretending that there’s anything else going on.  Okay?  It’s all about Dean, and I get that.”

            “Sam.”  Cas sighed.  “It’s not ‘all about Dean.’  I didn’t come here because of Dean.  He didn’t order me to come, he didn’t even request that I come.  I came because of my own concerns.  I don’t think you should be alone.”

            “I wasn’t alone.  I was with Claire before you and Dean stuck your noses in.”

            “Yes.  Were you teaching her that taking on witches alone was a good idea?”  Cas squinted his eyes at Sam.

            “I wouldn’t have taken on the witch job if I’d been with Claire,” Sam told the angel.  “I took on the witch job to get away from you and Dean.”

            “You broke your leg to get away from me and Dean.”  He shook his head.  “If you’d stayed with us you wouldn’t have broken your leg.”

            “It’s not like it’s the first broken bone I’ve gotten.  I killed the witch, it’s fine, I can get shit done, you know.  I know Dean keeps telling you I can’t, I know you have doubts about this yourself, but I can.  And you know what?  Whether or not you think I’m competent, I’m going to keep on hunting.”  He watched as Castiel lifted his head up.

            “But you hate hunting.”

            “It’s not like I’m good for much else anymore.”  Sam shrugged.  “You know, I hadn’t even been looking to go solo when I got Jody’s call.  I just wanted to make sure Claire was safe.  But now that I’ve had space?  There’s no way I can go back to being led around by the nose, sitting back and following Dean’s orders, and letting him take out his frustrations on me.  I’m just not doing it.”

            “Sam, he needs you,” Cas tried.

            Sam took a deep breath.  “Let him show me that he ‘needs’ me, then.  Let him show me by treating me like an actual person and an equal.  No more of ‘this is a dictatorship’ Dean.  We got him back, he’s human again, that’s enough for me.  He’s made his feelings perfectly clear, I’ll respect them, but I’m not going back.”  He took a deep breath, surprised by how light he felt.

            “He won’t do that, Sam.  You know that.”

            “He will if it means enough to him.  For now, though, he’s got you.”

            “Sam,” Cas said, and reached toward him.  “It’s true that Dean and I have a special bond.  It is.”  He let his arm fall.  “And I’ve let that… I’ve let that bond guide me in my relations with you.  Angels are hierarchical, warrior angels more than others.  We have a chain of command and we honor it.  I’ve accepted that structure in your family and I thought you did too.”

            Sam felt his mouth twist and fought it back.  “Families aren’t supposed to be hierarchies.  They aren’t.  And again – I’m not going to sit here and try to waste both of our time trying to convince you that I’m right.  I’m just the abomination, after all.”

            “Sam,” Cas sighed, hanging his head.

            “I’m also not going to be part of that.  I’m just… I’m going to do the work.  Out here, away from the whole toxic dynamic.  I miss him, sure.  I miss the way it used to be, when we could talk and laugh and joke and stuff.  But he doesn’t want it to be that way anymore.  He wants someone who will idolize him and jump to and say ‘yes sir.’  That ain’t me.”

            “It could be.”

            “No.  It couldn’t.”

            “He sees it as a betrayal,” Castiel tried.

            Sam gave a little laugh.  “He sees the way I brush my teeth as a betrayal, Cas.  I can’t live up to those standards.  Not even going to try.  If he wants to hunt me still, let him.  I won’t fight him.  But I won’t submit, either.”

            Sam started to walk away, but Cas put himself between himself and the door.  “What’s all this about Dean hunting you, Sam?  I understand the rest of it – I don’t agree, but I understand.  This is nonsensical.”

            Sam snorted.  When Cas shook his head, Sam sighed.  “He told me he was going to hunt me back when he got out of Hell.  And then again right before… right before I killed Lilith.  In a voice mail.”

            Cas frowned.  “He did not.  I don’t know about the first incident, but he did not leave a threatening voice mail.  He left you a message of love.”

            “You’re full of shit, Cas.  I’ve still got it on my phone.”  Sam walked out, hands clenched into fists.

            Claire was in his room when he got back.  “This isn’t going to work out,” he told her.  “I know you wanted it to be more… together-y, but I just can’t.  Sorry.  If you want to get away from Dean and Cas for a while but still want someone to back you up, you know how to reach me.”

            Her face fell.  She looked like she might cry.  “Sam, wait.  What’s wrong?  What happened?  I thought you guys would talk it out and be okay again!”

            “Claire, the problem is that Cas and I were never close to begin with, okay?  I went in there and he immediately came at me about working with Dean.  Again.  I just…”  He shook his head.  “He doesn’t get it, and I think he’s not going to.  He doesn’t want to.  He’s always going to be Dean’s friend first.  His whole spiel was about how I need to stop going off on my own and stay with _Dean_ because that’s what _Dean_ needs, even when I pointed out that it’s harmful to _me_.”  He shook his head.  “I’ve got to go.  I’m just going to go out to the island and figure out what’s going on.  Don’t try this at home, okay?”

            “Sam, that doesn’t sound safe.”

            “I’ll be fine.”  He waved to her as he took off for his car.

            On the whole the job was kind of a letdown.  Claire probably could have done it without too much of a problem - although there were parts, he guessed, that maybe would have been less simple if he hadn’t had decades of experience telling him things like setting up the pyre _before_ finding the tether object when working alone was probably a good plan.  And maybe the silence when there should have been laughter - like when he discovered that the tether object was in fact a chamber pot - was a little disheartening.  Or a lot disheartening.  But for the most part it was a job, just a job, like anyone else’s job.  The most exciting part was trying to navigate on one leg, and it wasn’t even like that was too much of a novelty.

            Afterward, he stole a rowboat from the emergency station and got himself back to shore in the dark.  Then he drove down Route 7 for about half an hour until he got to Long Bottom, found a motel and crashed.  

            In the morning, he woke up and did as much of a workout as he could under the circumstances.  Then he started looking for a new case.  If he didn’t find work, if he didn’t have something to do, he would start to think about what had happened with Cas and Claire and Dean, and the last thing he wanted to do was to think about what had happened with Cas and Claire and Dean.  She was better off with them.  She was good – smart, normal, pure.  She’d work out fine; they’d treat her like a person.  Probably.  If not, she had his number.

            It looked like there might be something in Kentucky, down in the Daniel Boone State Forest.  There had been a veritable explosion of overgrowth, coupled with an excess of couples being caught for lewd acts on the trail.  Sam did a little bit of digging and it seemed like it might be the work of a trickster, although he wasn’t going to rule out fae or possibly some kind of god.  It would take Sam about five or six hours to get down there; he could do that easily.  In the meantime, he did a little bit of research and spent a little bit of time redistributing excessive CEO pay into some of his fraudulent bank accounts, via some transactions that would never get a second glance and wouldn’t be traceable to him even if they did.

            The next day he drove down to Kentucky, where he spent some time interviewing witnesses.  It took a while to get much out of them; funnily enough, people seemed to turn very red and stammer a lot when a tall, muscular man in a suit came and asked them about their public sex arrest.  Eventually he managed to piece together a coherent story and determined that whatever he was dealing with hadn’t been seen directly by the people involved, but they’d definitely experienced something outside the realm of “normal.”

            It occurred to him, as he prepared to head out to the forest, that he might have lucked out in not having a partner for this particular job.  Everyone who had gotten busted for public sex had gone into the woods with a partner.  They hadn’t always or even often been a romantic partner, but sex had taken place no matter what – and always in the overgrown areas of the trail, always with the people they’d gone into the woods with.  By going solo, by being the solitary creature he’d become, Sam had made himself essentially immune.

            He took off into the affected area, within the Red River Gorge trail system.  It wasn’t hard to find an area that had been touched by the phenomenon; underbrush had spilled over to almost obscure the trail.  Sam reached into his jacket, leaning on his crutches, and pulled out an ash stake.

            Something rustled in the bushes behind him.  He spun around on his good foot, stake at the ready, but it turned out to only be Castiel, crouching in the brush with a branch held over his face like some kind of very naive camouflage.  “Cas!” he barked out, mouth dry and palms sweaty.  “What are you doing here?  It’s not safe for you to be here right now!”

            “I came here to try to talk to you again,” the angel said.  He licked his lips and Sam couldn’t tear his eyes away from his perfect, pink tongue.  He wanted to taste that tongue.  He wanted it wrapped around his own, or maybe better yet –

            Sam shook his head to clear it.  “It’s not safe for two people to be together right now!” he snapped.  “Get out of here!”

            Cas didn’t obey.  He stepped closer.  “I don’t want to get out of here,” he growled.  “And you’re in no position to be giving me orders.”

            Sam met the angel’s eyes, a growl rising.  “You have no idea what you’re letting yourself in for,” he told Castiel.  It wasn’t rage that brought the heat to his body or the undertone to his voice, although he hoped to all that was holy that Castiel didn’t realize that.  With the influence of whatever god was doing all of this, Sam figured he was probably safe.  “Get out of here and save yourself while you can.”

            “I don’t want to.”  Cas reached out jerkily and grabbed Sam’s face, bringing it down so he could force their lips together.  His mouth tasted like ozone and rain, and Sam wanted all of it.

            He pulled himself away, shoving Cas violently across the trail and away from the greenery just as a green figure stepped out of the forest.  “Impressive,” the figure said.  His accent sounded vaguely Welsh, if years of watching too much Torchwood were anything to go by.  “No one’s ever been able to resist my influence before.”

            “Practice,” Sam told him with a glare.  “You want to tell me who you are and what you’re doing?”

            The creature bowed.  “The name is Viridos.”

            Sam grimaced.  “Verdure and virility.  Got it.  Sorry, buddy.”  He hefted the stake.

            “I’m not hurting anyone.  A few people got arrested.  And who do you think you are to raise a stake to me, puny mortal?  Er, differently puny mortal?”

            Cas cleared his throat, although he didn’t move his eyes from Sam’s face.  “He’s Sam Fucking Winchester.”

            The green man paled at the name.   _“Oh.”_

            “Right.”  Sam launched himself forward on his crutches.

            “I don’t suppose we could talk this out?” asked the god.

            “What happens to your victims come fall?”

            The god winced.  “Well, the important thing is that I’m a cyclical god…”

            Sam sprung. Viridos tried to dodge, but even on one aching leg Sam was too quick for him.  He plunged the stake through the divinity’s ribcage, relishing the shockwave as wood crashed through so much more than mere bone and tissue.  

            He pulled back when the monster stopped moving, hauling himself back to his foot with nothing but his abdominal muscles.  Taking a deep breath, he pushed his hair out of his eyes and blew out a sharp, explosive breath.  Killing gods only looked easy.

            The overwhelming desire to rip Cas’ clothes off subsided.  He still wouldn’t mind, but it was no more than he usually felt.  “How you doing there, Cas?” he asked.

            The angel wouldn’t look at him.  “You just killed a god.”

            “Yeah.  Well, all of those people were going to die come fall if I didn’t, so.”  He shrugged and adjusted his crutches.  “Let’s head back.  They do get bears up in here; I’d rather not have a close encounter, you know?”

            Cas flinched.  “Of course.”  He followed behind Sam and the pair made their way back to their cars together.  The hike took about an hour since Sam was limited in his speed and mobility, and they passed the entire way in silence.

            Claire, who had evidently been left back at the cars like some blonde repeat of Sam’s childhood, looked from man to man and shook her head.  “Alright.  You two are going to sit down and talk about whatever happened.  No one is storming off.  If I have to play referee then I will, but you should know that’s pretty stupid since I’m eighteen, you’re thirty-two and you’re like four billion.”

            Sam wanted to correct her on his age, the centuries in the Cage still counted, but he decided against it.  Why bother?  It was still a drop in the bucket compared to Castiel.  “You’re not going to quit, are you?” he asked with a sigh.  “Okay.  Fine.”  He drove back to the motel, with the dreadful Caddy behind him.  Claire got a second room for her and Castiel and locked Sam and Cas into Sam’s room while she went to wait out their conversation.

            Sam sat down at the table and elevated his foot.  “Sorry,” he winced.  “Not trying to be rude.”

            Cas frowned.  “Are you in pain, Sam?”

            “Well, I’ve been hiking on a broken leg, so yeah.  It doesn’t exactly tickle.”  He reached for the bottle of ibuprofen, but Cas put a hand on it.

            “Why won’t you let me heal you?”

            Sam blinked at him.  “You haven’t offered, for one thing.”

            Cas frowned.  “I haven’t?”

            “No.”

            “Oh.”  He looked away.  “Why haven’t you asked?”

            Sam sighed.  “If you wanted to, you’d have offered.”

            Cas hesitated.  “Sam, may I heal your leg?”

            Sam felt the corners of his mouth twitching, more or less against his conscious will.  “Thanks.”

            Sam felt a rush of warm, peaceful energy and then his leg felt fine.  The cast even disappeared.  “Thank you, Cas,” he said.  He put the foot down.

            “Thank you, Sam.  I disliked seeing you in pain.”  The angel sat down across from Sam.  “I wanted to apologize for the incident in the woods today.”

            Sam held up a hand.  “It’s not your fault.  That particular god compelled it.  Don’t worry about it.”

            Cas looked away again.  “You were unaffected.”

            “Not true.  I knew what was going on – I’d done my research going into the fight.  So I knew that they were just urges caused by outside influence.  I’ve got a lot of practice fighting urges.”  He smirked.  “I guess addiction has some fringe benefits.  Kind of like a silver lining.”

            “I don’t understand that reference.  But you were feeling something?”

            “Cas.”  Sam sighed.  “Don’t get… weird about it, okay?  It was the spell.  Yes, I was fighting something but you don’t have anything to worry about.  I can behave myself.”

            “I enjoyed the kiss.”

            Sam almost choked on his own tongue.  “Excuse me?”

            “I’m sorry.  I don’t mean to offend you.  I just wanted to make sure that there were no misunderstandings.  I had come to try to explain – at Claire’s insistence – that I don’t care for you only because of Dean.  And then I came under the god’s influence and I kissed you.”

            Sam shook his head.  “It was just because of the god, Cas.  You don’t suddenly want to go kissing something like me.”

            Cas slammed his hand down on the cheap table, making Sam jump.  “You are not a thing, Sam Winchester.  You are a man.  A brilliant, brave and competent man.  Who kisses well.”

            “I need to research this, see if angels just suffer the effects for longer or if they get hit harder –“  Sam rose and tried to go for his books.

            Cas stepped into his personal space.  “I was jealous.”

            “Of the god?”

            “The woman.”  Cas squinted at him.  “I was jealous of the woman you shared your body with in Cleveland.  I was angry when you said you wanted a connection so you sought out a stranger.  I wanted to be your connection.  I didn’t know you wanted that.  I wanted to be that for you, but I didn’t know you wanted it.”

            Sam staggered back, driving his thumb into his palm.  “This isn’t real.”

            It took a second for Cas to catch up.  “This is very real.  I cannot tolerate a situation where you do not understand my sentiments.  It is fine if you do not share them but I need for you to understand them, Sam.”

            “Cas, this isn’t right.  You barely tolerate me.”

            “I pulled Dean out of Hell on orders from Zachariah.  I pulled you out of Hell because you should not have been allowed to suffer.”  Hands sought out Sam’s hips and rested there, grounding him.  “I would like to kiss you again.”

            Sam felt a giggle rise in his chest and smothered it ruthlessly.  “I don’t want to take advantage –“

            Once again, Cas pulled Sam’s face down to his.  This time, Sam didn’t fight.  He let himself melt into the kiss and participate fully, hands cradling the angel’s face

            Cas helped Sam off with his jacket before divesting himself of the trench coat.  “You were very impressive against that pagan god today,” he told Sam, unbuttoning Sam’s outer shirt.  “I was proud of you.”

            Sam shrugged off the garment and helped Cas off with the white dress shirt that practically constituted his uniform.  They both typically dressed to hide their bodies, or at least not to emphasize their physiques, but Cas had a pretty impressive body underneath the accountant suit.  Sam kissed Cas again but only briefly, nuzzling along his neck from his earlobe down to his collarbone.  “Really?”

            “Oh yes.”  Cas hands traced patterns on Sam’s chest that the hunter couldn’t quite follow.  “You’re an amazing being, Sam Winchester.  And right now, you’re mine.”

            Sam couldn’t help the little shiver that went up his spine at the words.

            Cas had the option, of course, of simply making their clothes disappear with a thought.  He didn’t take it.  Instead, he carefully peeled back the layers of Sam’s shirts until his torso was bare to the hyperactive air conditioning, seeming almost in awe of the hunter’s body as it was slowly revealed under his ministrations.

            Sam pulled the angel in and kissed him again, needing the heat of Castiel’s body against the chill of the air.  As their mouths joined, tongues tasting one another, Sam let his hands roam over the toned expanse of Cas’ body.  He liked the feel of the angel’s neat, compact muscles and smooth arms, and as he moved his mouth down to Cas’ neck and collarbone he found that he loved the taste of Cas’ skin.

            Cas knew what Sam felt like, of course.  He’d re-built Sam from his component atoms up.  He’d never have known that from the way that Cas explored him now.  Those hands, which had smote without hesitation and healed so easily, now ran over Sam’s body almost greedily.  Cas seemed to figure out pretty quickly that Sam liked to have his nipples played with, because Sam soon found himself with his head thrown back and giving a low hiss.  “Right there,” he urged.  “Just like that.”

            The angel gave a little smirk, dipping one hand lower to stroke Sam’s hard cock through the outside of his jeans.

            As Castiel urged Sam to lean back, helping him off with his jeans and taking him into his mouth, Sam had a moment of terror.  This couldn’t be happening.  There was no way that Castiel, Angel-of-the-Fricking-Lord, was here, going to town on his dick like it was some kind of Popsicle.  (And where had he learned to do that, anyway?)  There was no way Cas would want him, it had to be some kind of trick or ruse or hallucination.

            Cas pulled off of him with a pop.  “Sam?”

            Sam blinked his way back to the present.  “Yeah.”

            “This is real.  This is very real.  I’m right here, I’m with you and I love you.”

            Sam swallowed.  Maybe this was a ruse, maybe it was a trick, but damn if it didn’t feel good right now.  He pulled Cas into another kiss and fumbled for the lube and condoms, in the pocket of his duffel bag by the side of his bed.

            Cas eyed the products and nodded, divesting himself of his own pants.  Then, he slicked up two fingers and started to open Sam.

            At some point, Sam needed to figure out where Cas had learned to do this, because he was very clearly not a novice.  He patiently stretched Sam out while making sure to pay plenty of attention to his cock and nipples.  It didn’t take Cas long to find Sam’s prostate either, making Sam cry out with pleasure.  When Sam had been reduced to a panting, incoherent mess, Cas finally rolled a condom onto himself, slicked himself up and pressed into Sam.

            It had been a long time since Sam had bottomed, longer still since he’d received any pleasure from it.  He hadn’t forgotten how good it felt to be so full, not exactly, but feeling it again after so long was a revelation to say the least.  “Cas!” he gasped.

            “Are you alright?” the angel asked, tense with the effort of holding himself still.

            “Better than.”  Sam smiled then, hugely.  “Just… you can move now.”

            And Cas did.

            They didn’t last long.  They didn’t have to.  Sam hadn’t ever been much of a clock-watcher anyway; people lasted as long as they lasted and as long as everyone felt good that was all that mattered.  Cas did short-cut the cleanup process, waving a hand to clean them up before curling around Sam.  The hunter kissed Castiel, gently this time, and fell asleep in his arms.

           


	7. But Still Inside A Whisper To A Riot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A decision is made.

            Sam slept beside Castiel for the full night.  Cas didn’t – he was an angel, he didn’t need sleep – but Sam woke up next to him all the same.  “I heard from Claire,” Cas told him.  “She texted me several party hat emojis and slept in the other room.”

            Sam blushed a deep red.  “I see.”  He shook his head and rolled over onto his side, so he could look directly at Cas.  “Did you stay here the whole night?”

            “I did.”  Cas smiled a little bit.  “I enjoyed holding you.”

            Sam chuckled.  “I never would have pegged you for a cuddler, Cas.”

            “I liked it very much.  It provided, as you said, a connection.”  He traced the outline of Sam’s jaw with his hand.  “What happens now, Sam?”

            Sam sighed.  “I was wondering the same thing.  And kind of hoping to avoid the question at the same time, if that makes any sense.”  He sat up and pushed his hair into place.  “I mean, if you’ve just… gotten it out of your system or whatever, I guess that’s fine.”

            The angel frowned.  “Sam, are you saying that because it is what you want or because that’s what you think that I want?”

            Sam cleared his throat.  “I’m not usually given to casual encounters.”

            “That’s what I thought.  I want to be with you, Sam.  I want to be with you again.  And again.  And again.  For as long as you’ll have me.”  A faint spot of red appeared in the angel’s cheeks.  “I meant what I said last night, Sam.  I love you.”  

            Sam wrapped his arms around Castiel.  Winchesters were iffy with love.  They didn’t know how to express it, they didn’t say it, they didn’t even acknowledge it to themselves.  Sam, though – he had, he did.  He’d loved before, and he’d admitted it to the people involved and to his family.  Why should he stop himself now?  “I love you too, Cas.  I do.”  He leaned against the headboard and let the angel rest his head on Sam’s chest.  “The question is, where do we go from here?  I know you want to get back to Dean.  And nothing’s changed, in terms of what I need from Dean.”

            “Sam.”  Cas sighed.  “I care for Dean.  In a different way than the way I love you, of course, but I care for him.  We are bound, he and I.  And so are you.  You are soulmates, whatever else has come between you.”  He traced the outline of Sam’s abs.

            “I know.”  Sam sighed.  “But I can’t go on like that.”

            “So don’t.”  Cas looked up at him.  “We’ll go on together for a while.  You, me and Claire.  And when Dean is ready to listen, to cooperate, we’ll reunite.”

            _It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real._  Sam ignored the voice.  Real or not, his heart felt lighter than it had in a decade.  “You mean it?”

            “Yes.”


End file.
